Everardo García González – [+] Re-nacer (2016); [↖] La Espera (2018); [↑] Tu cruz (201X); [↗] Desprenderme (2016); [-] Proceso (2018); [↙] S’Acrofa (201X); [↓] Title unknown (201X); [↘] El deseo de… (201X)
The aesthetic of González‘s work feels like a deconstruction of fantasy art from the late 80s/early 90s steeped in sci-fi/survival horror video games then filtered through a metal-culture inflected preoccupation with the subversion of Xtian iconography.
I’m not entirely comfortable with the male gaze-y-ness of the work from a macro perspective–there’s an inescapable vein of feminine embodiment with death/apocalyptic tropes as well as a sense that as the viewer you are a party to a sort of theater of the vaguely macabre/unsettling in a way tending more towards authorial, marionette like control of elements than a sense that what is seen is authentically correspondent to any sort of lived experience on the part of the women depicted; the religious icon side of things pushes it decidedly towards objectification.
But with regards to the more post-apocalyptic goth tone and the impressively faux photorealistic rendering, this actually overlaps with something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately–namely: I’ve realized that I am increasingly disenchanted with contemporary photography/image making. Usually, I encounter something a couple times a month that becomes a mini-obsession; those hat stick around for longer than a week or two go on to become things that I come to love.
I’m finding stuff I dig still, definitely. But either I’m no longer tapped into the right Tumblr realm or there just isn’t as much top notch work getting out lately? Mostly, the stuff that is meshing with me tends to be older stuff that I somehow missed out on and am only know digging into.
Being the type of person who needs constant input, I’ve been delving–increasingly–into the work of illustrator. This isn’t entirely surprising. I was a huge comic book nerd in the mid-90s. Sadly, I wasn’t into the artier stuff then and preferred the more blockbuster fare.
But I’ve actually dived fairly deep into Geof Darrow’s back catalog and am finding a lot of ways his work is illustrative of discrepancies/shortcoming between my personal vision and my creative output. (González illustrates the connective tissue between a rather outlandish notion I have for installing my work at some point in the near future and reinforces the value of the time I’m spending with Darrow’s drawings.)
Acetylene Eyes 