Alberto Aragón Reyes a Review

Alberto Aragón Reyes – a review

The Mexican artist Alberto Aragón Reyes is – despite his young age – already a household name on the international art scene. The self-taught 29 years old Aragón Reyes has a string of exhibitions in Mexico, New York and the European territories behind him, most recently a display of a score of his works at the art gallery ”Kunstgalleriet” in Odense, Denmark in September 2009. Aragón Reyes twenty-something canvases on display belonged to his small-scaled works (no canvas over 160 x 180 cm), all held in a colour code of their own; Earth-tone colours with vivid yellow, red or blue areas. The artists paints in rather thick layers, using the texture of the paint as ornaments, highlighting parts of the motives with the thickness of the paint. The necklace on one portrait, the dots on a piece of fabric on another are thus no longer two dimensional, but 3D where you can feel the structure as well as see it. The first works of art that greeted you at the exhibition were the little “7 Monks” held in tones of white as well as “Dancers”; three figures held in yellow, red and greenish blue. They set the tone with their colour-choice as well as the figures depicted as all figures on the twenty-something paintings have one thing in common: they have the same face. From “St. Barbara” with her sword and lion, over the three persons holding a small shrine in “The Temple” to “Monk and Two Bengal Tigers”, they all have the same serene, smiling face, even the tigers! The faces can be calm and blissful like the ones on the yellow figures on “Walking On The Water”, peacefully resting like on the blue “Ocean” or clarified and curious like on the beautiful “Red”, but they are always the same. The idea of showing the unity of the human race in this way is quite fetching, but also disturbing. The thing is, that another element that repeats itself in many of the works is the shape of the cocoon. Many of Aragón Reyes’ figures are not wholly human beings, but faces protruding from multi-coloured cocoons. Watching the two figures in the greenish “Cocoons In The Water” you realise that beneath the serene, smiling faces there is a silent desperation, a deep pain in the eyes of the figures. This desolation refers to other works of Aragón Reyes not on display in Denmark – works of grief and harshness and despair, that has earned the young artist a reputation as a modern day Goya. Visit www.aarago.net to see works of Alberto Aragón Reyes.

@ Lise Lyng Falkenberg, 2009