Pedro Paricio is a philosopher who works with the brush, each stroke a meditation on the act. Over the past decade, he has established himself as one to watch, his oeuvre ever expanding to more fully realize his ideas. Ashe has risen to prominence the art world has taken note, and Halcyon Gallery and the Tenerife Espacio de las Artes have recently published Elogio de la Pintura | In Praise of Painting, presenting a decade of the artist’s works.
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The book begins with his earliest works (The Canary Paradise), which were first exhibited in Barcelona in 2008. Paricio’s commitment to the medium was evident then, as he created a series of colorful abstract works that revealed an in-depth understanding of and fluency in the medium.
Totam [P]. Series: Shaman, 2014. Acrylic on linen, 97 x 73 cm. Artwork © Pedro Paricio
Paricio explained, ”I want to mix street art with traditional art to show the power of abstract art. I want to combine the ideas of Clement Greenberg with the style of Keith Haring. I love critical theory and art theory so much I had considered becoming a curator rather than a painter. But I need to create, to explain something, and my paintings are the vehicle for that. I love the freedom of abstraction and I love the power of materials and color. But I do not believe abstract art is a new world; it is a world inside the world in which it was born and provides a new vision of the world in which we are all living. It is freedom from the structure of the mind and of the computerized world. We are caught in a system and live together in a comfortable world where we want easy culture. We want only to make beautiful and funny things. But I want to think and develop my mind, to free it from its confines. I want to open the secret door.”
The artist’s studio in London, 2014. Photograph © Alfie Hunter.
And, indeed, he did. By committing to the life of a painter, Paricio dove right in, and became completely committed to the demands of his calling. Closed off in his studio, Paricio paints for twelve hours a day, every day of the week, allowing himself one day of rest, but never more than that. His commitment is total and it is absolute, as each series of work beings him further into harmony with the on-going history of the medium. His series, Master Painters, reveals this, as he remakes classic works of art history in his own image. In Paricio’s work, we see the power of iconography to transcend the specifics of style and content to convey a new way of looking at the old. Here, Paricio opens a secret door for us to pass through.
Timothy Leary. Series: The Canary Paradise, 2008. Acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 50 x 70 cm. Fragment. Artwork © Pedro Paricio
The painting, the act and the object, is the portal to a destiny that has existed since the dawn of mankind. As Paricio explains, “For me, tradition began 45 thousand years ago, or rather that started when the first painter began his work. The way in which he did it or what his objective was is debatable. But it’s that, in reality, nobody knows, the ideas that painting had and its motives, its conjectures, reinterpretations, signs of creation of tradition: society wasn’t the same, there were many things that were just beginning. But, the impulse and the gesture? We still carry that gene inside us. That dream of representation. What I like is to have the freedom to look back to those places and compose with them, together with them, my present and future.”
Miss Rosen is a New York-based writer, curator, and brand strategist. There is nothing she adores so much as photography and books. A small part of her wishes she had a proper library, like in the game of Clue. Then she could blaze and write soliloquies to her in and out of print loves.
