LUZ TOKIO 2

PAINTING

Graphite and oil on tracing paper.

Painted surface 25 x 35 cm (9.84 x 13.77 in) in a format of 35.5 x 45.5 cm (13.97 x 17.91 in).

Year of realization 2013.

Signed in the bottom-right of the piece.

Published in the book Malefic Time, 110 Katanas, page 79.

Painting has always seemed torn between an inward and an outward gaze: between vision and perception, between our dreams and the concrete, highly politicized conditions framing our comprehension of the world and what it might become. Today is no different. After a period in which the medium has been dominated by process-based abstraction, the figure – and representation with it – is ascendant again. But, if the 1990s and 2000s saw artists such as John Currin distorting classical form while others, following Gerhard Richter, mimicked photography, today’s figuration displays a distinctly different character. Gone, for the most part, are the echoes of old masters; gone, too, are the blurs of photorealism. What takes their place, instead, is a highly idiosyncratic approach filtered through pronounced affect, comic-book and sci-fi aesthetics, dreamy narratives and an eagerness to engage with our political moment without forfeiting the sensuousness of the medium.

David Geers (Sotheby's).

"They walk through streets filled with paint on the doors. There are strange signs on the walls, symbolic strokes on the ground and hanging fabrics with emblems."

Malefic Time, 110 Katanas.