Lucha Libre

Comment

Comment by Resident Curator on February 21, 2014 at 3:32pm

Curator’s Comment:  

 

These funny faces share the luscious use of intense color seen in your mixed media assemblages, but have an economic abstraction that belies their multi-faceted emotions. Lucha Libre, as the title implies, suggests a mask worn by a Mexican wrester with all its ludicrous and farcical associations. Stern and brooding, the downward slope of the forehead and nose form a sculpted beak of a face; the full red lips soften the figures gaze somewhat, but it’s difficult to separate form from postured artifice. I like the rough treatment of the paint surface on the head and eyes in general, which set off the more smoothly modeled shadows.  But it remains a curious amalgamation of conflicted expression, as anger versus resolve. The painting entitled A Beautiful Soul is much more disturbing as the facial features are more intact/representational, while displaying a cartoonish red gash of a mouth.  The primary areas of red yellow and blue create a bold color pattern, but the frontal mask face itself is neutralized to the point of diffusion or nullification. The darkly blackened smudges for eyes enhance the alarming disposition.