FERNANDO ÁLAMO ‘Fernando Álamo 2004-2013’

Full of sense and sensibility, Fernando Álamo’s work vividly shows the power of painting in the 21st century and its ability to combine individuality with the signs of its time. With the voluptuousness of a silk avalanche, it welcomes the hedonism of our civilization as well as the distress of today’s people. The sensorial pleasure given by life to those who can and know how to enjoy it, and the existential anxiety projected by its finiteness. This type of art is Braque’s «injury turned into light».

Works of art, just as nature, don’t need to have any meaning. «The rose is without why», said Borges that Angelus Silesius said. Fernando Álamo’s flowers bloomed at El jardín de agua (The water garden) ten years ago and, since then, they’ve become the main image in his poetics. He opens the door to an original world –tumultuous and intense, oozing sensuality and eroticism, combining perception and thinking, concepts and emotions– with an elegant Neo-expressionism. To visit this world is an aesthetic experience, intelligence for the eyes and mental delight. For some, it is enough to linger on the surface and enjoy the instant sensorial pleasure it provides; but, as a good wide-range swimmer, Fernando Álamo grants the possibility to dive into a type of poetics that values instinct, passion, humour and spontaneity. He uses plenty of references to other artists, which enables symbolic, historicist and aesthetic readings, but his work asks for an erotica of the glimpse rather than for hermeneutics.

In 2008-2009, Fernando Álamo decided to prune his garden no matter what (Por narices). To keep the poetic tension, a renovation is needed, and he undertook a radical one. All anecdotes were cleaned off the image and just a couple of big spots and a vertical axis were left. We see face archetypes, their essence or sheer abstraction, full of life and ambivalence, as is usual in Álamo’s work. Male sex organs, faces, just art, visual poetry? Viewers can enjoy the shivering of voluptuousness and/or search for meanings and keys.

The artist says what you see is just what you see, but we shouldn’t forget that irony, sexuality and humour pervade his poetics. And, also, that art is the most beautiful of all lies.

In 2010, Álamo went back to his flowers, and this year he is painting rhinoceros, caves and butterflies. The artist says that it is all about working with the classic five senses. Flowers activate smell; fruits and chocolates, taste; the rhythm of my painting comes from the music constantly playing in my atelier; I carry out my work with the sense of touch and, with my sight, I invite viewers to enjoy it. And his daily contact with water (he has been and still is a swimmer), together with the passing of time, operate in his poetics providing new sensations: dampness is physical and sexual; levity and the ephemeral feeling, existential.

IMAGE GALLERIES

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