“The Vertical Instant”

15/02/2023 - 30/04/2023

Mexico City

Víctor López-Rúa is a Spanish artist whose proposal revolves around painting, specifically, the position of representational painting today; of what can become within this convulsed planet of Contemporary Art and its unique communication with the viewer. It is an exhibition of enormous versatility, transversal in its multiple meanings and which connects with what is the core of art: its power to amaze and, at the same time, its colossal speculative power. The artist, also, has an original syntax, an innovative and unprecedented method of communicating with the public through painting and video: Stereoscopic Painting; an installation where we are conceptually bombarded and whose purpose is to trigger in the visitor a deeper examination of painting as a specific medium, its relationship with audiovisual technology and science; but also, the lucubration about the imprint of the materiality of the image, its physicality, about the mediation of the brain and the limits of vision. Thus, the exhibition seeks to provoke a different look, to show a new mode of transmission, an original moment of union in which time stands still, the passing of minutes is suspended and the spectator deepens into the instant, sinks into it: into a Vertical Instant.

As an immediate approximation to Víctor López-Rúa’s proposal and to move on solid ground from the beginning, it is necessary to clarify that its meaning revolves around painting, specifically, the position of representational painting today; of what can become within this convulsed planet of Contemporary Art and its unique communication with the viewer.

Next, it is also necessary to indicate that López-Rúa develops two independent paths to reach the whole of his understanding: both processes have two different objectives that converge, finally, in provoking a different look, in producing a new mode of transmission, an original moment of union in which time stands still, the passing of minutes is suspended and the spectator deepens into the instant, sinks into it: it is the Vertical Instant; a time illuminated by the image that pierces us like a sweet-tasting spear and holds us in wonder.

Thus, from the formal and mechanical part, the Spanish artist has an original syntax, an innovative and unprecedented method of communicating with the public through painting and video: Stereoscopic Painting; an installation where we are conceptually bombarded and whose purpose is to trigger in the visitor a deeper examination of painting as a specific medium, its relationship with audiovisual technology and science; but also, the lucubration about the imprint of the materiality of the image, its physicality, about the mediation of the brain and the limits of vision…

In addition, technology accompanies the genesis of all the works from the first step, both in the stereographic part and in the two-dimensional part, since in this, López-Rúa, starting from the natural, transforms the image from a plastic point of view and scale through projections.

But there is still more, because, from a conceptual perspective, the artist also has a double way to question the viewer: first, reflection, before the optical device, which provokes the confrontation between what we can understand as the latest audiovisual technology -the 3D- the stereoscopic science of 1830 and traditional painting.

And, on the other hand, there is the message itself within the works, the theme, the thesis that is presented to the public and that questions them about various aspects ranging from the position of the landscape in contemporary art to domestic violence. And all this is in a constant dialectic with literature, cinema, and art history.

In short, this is an exhibition of enormous versatility, transversal in its multiple meanings, and which connects with what is the core of art: its power to amaze and, at the same time, its colossal speculative power.