Do you have a fairy in your pocket or are you happy to see me?

This image is part of Annie Leibovitz last body of work, a revision of some of the classical stories used by the Disney factory. Shocking, but in a bad way, most of the images are plainly awful but this "annunciation" of Wendy by Peter Pan is just inspiring.

Exhibition: "Mi abuelo era chatarrero (chismes, cacharros y remiendos)"

His grandfather was a scrap dealer. He played between scrap iron, huge packages of cardboard ready to be recycled, and every possible material his grandpa could find that it might have the slightest value. Most of the time the boy was by his own, looking for new things in the warehouse. When he got tired, used to go to the garage and rested in the bench where his grandpa usually played cards with his grandmother or read the paper. The walls of the garage were covered from roof to ceiling with pages of magazines, glued to the wall in an arbitrary order. The boy liked to look the scraps of paper for hours trying to make any sense of them.

I have always been a portrait painter. I was educated and trained by looking at the work of German expressionists and painters of The School of London, so my inclination to work with portraits and textures was predictable. However, for the last few years my work has been modified through the addition of collage to my pictorial process. More than just a technique, collage has meant for me a change of attitude. It creates an environment where painting can move more freely and generate hybrid images, which are charged with narratives but at the same time fight against a simplistic reading. The starting point for the paintings is the inclusion of random snapshots and family photos, which are in origin instinctive acts to portray reality. Through the juxtaposition of photographic materials and paint I struggle to maintain the tension between clarity and opacity, between a photomechanical process and a manual one, between the quality of a short-lived graffiti and the visual heritage of the old masters. The task of the painting becomes to preserve the unresolved tension.

Se acaba el año

Here is part of what I've painted this semester, some of which
is going to be in an exhibition I am doing in Spain next week.

Shah Rukh Khan (Probably the sexiest person on the planet)



After a week lying in bed completely drugged due to a painful
backache, I'm now feeling almost ready to come back to regular
life. Being an Internet-addict, the first thing I've done,
as soon as the pain has allowed me to sit, has been to switch on my
computer. Among some other things I've found this promotional
video of a film that is still in post-production called "Om Shanti Om".

The tone of the film is parodic toward the Bollywood industry,
exaggerating the clichés and the sexually loaded scenes that exist in
every Bollywood film. Although one won't be able to find a kiss in any
of these movies, the display of sexuality is often so explicit that
the term "soft-porn" could be applied to them. To be fair, it is not
a just-for-men production. Women (and men, myself included) can enjoy
one of the most irresistible and appealing spectacles ever:
a wet Shah Rukh Khan.

Back to work




Some random drawings made with a Pentel brush pen that
I bought in Spain. Since I could not paint there, drawing in my
scratch book was the only way of distract myself and keep the
beast controlled until I could came back to work in my studio...

Philly Rules!






This last weekend in Philadelphia was great. I ate homemade
pancakes made by Amish, visited the Art Museum where I could see
an incredible exhibition of Chinese Drawings and had a photo
taken with Rocky. What else can one ask to a city?

Square




WARNING (from the movie Dead or Alive: Hanzaisha directed by
Takashi Miike): This motion picture contains explicit portrayals of
violence; sex; violent sex; sexual violence; clowns and violent scenes
of violent excess, which are definitely not suitable for all audiences.

I seriously think that it should be mandatory to warn about the presence
of clowns in movies and TV shows...

Missing the palm trees

A palm tree stands in the middle of Rusafa,
Born in the West, far from the land of palms.
I said to it: How like me you are, far away and in exile,
In long separation from family and friends.
You have sprung from soil in which you are a stranger;
And I, like you, am far from home.

This poem wrote by Add al-Rahman is included in the
book "Ornament of the World" by Maria Rosa Menocal,
a powerful series of "tales" about tolerance and the love of
Andalusians for contradictions and diversity that was lost
in favor of a "modern" concept of purity and fear of the
other called nation.

Snowday





I am reading "Daimon", a book based in the life
of Lope de Aguirre, a Spanish conqueror of the
"new" continent, and I just remember some photos
I took from this funny sculpture placed in the Organization
of American States. It was Franco's present to USA and
I suppose it was his "subtle" way of marking territory...

O Superman...

Laurie Anderson has been the artist in residence in the
Department of Art at Maryland University this year, she
presented her new film and spent some time with the
graduate students in the MFA program. Thanks to one of
my mates, Ellington Robinson, I have some pictures to share
with the world...