PAOLA ROMEROPortfolio

Posthumous self-portrait, oil on canvas, 39´´ x 54´´

PAOLA ROMEROColombia, 1977

I am a Colombian artist who creates paintings and photographs based on my interest by themes related to memory, corporeality, temporality, disintegration, disappearance and death.

I come from a country where there is a precarious balance between existence and invisibility. For one important coexist rituals around death rooted in popular culture that seek, at all costs, keep "live" image of the deceased. But on the other hand live in the politics of forgetfulness caused by the violence that has plagued us for many years, people do not want to talk about death and missing persons are forgotten.

Given the obsession fades record what, in my desire to keep things in mind after death, I use painting as evocative act, temporary and ephemeral. Painting as an image of a desire, an impossibility.

Doble álbum de familia (ubicuidad), Oil on canvas and photography , 45´´ x 35´´

Recents Exhibitions

Mundo Dibujo + Habitar la Línea, Habitar la Línea Gallery, Madrid, España, 2012

Vanishing point, Café Madrid. Madrid, España, 2012

Dibujo Madrid is uncovered CSA La Tabacalera of Lavapiés, Madrid, España, 2011

Boustrophedon, Espacio F. Gallery Madrid, España, 2010

Other views, Consulate General of Colombia. Hispano Colombiano Center. Madrid, España. 2010

Polis project, Hispano Colombiano Center, Madrid, España, 2010

Exposibles, Exhibition Hall School of Fine Arts, Complutense University of Madrid, España. 2008

Eschatological banquet, space involved Magazine(di)fusión, Madrid, España, 2008

Text to be put in Relief, space involved Magazine (di)fusión, Madrid, España, 2008

Articles

Revolve Magazine, march 2010. Interview by Antonio Pradel Art critic and historian. 

Anoche Tuve un Sueño Magazine, june 2010. Article by María Sanz around the work “Des(aparecidos)”.

Background and Training

Bachelor´s degree of Fine Arts from the National University of Colombia (2003) and Master in Theory and Practice of Contemporary Arts at the University Complutense of Madrid (2007).

DES (APARECIDOS) (dis-appeared)Oil on canvas, obituaries erased. variable dimensions

I have worked with photographs of missing people in Colombia. Portraits based binding fragments of these photographs, with different faces fragmented remains plausible paints portraits that do not respond to a particular identity.

The painting, then, as an act of resistance against oblivion. Addressing these two seemingly contradictory strategies: first delete the names of the obituaries, second, imaginary portraits painted from photographs fragments of missing people. Strategies that have something in common: they are, in both cases, slow process.

The erasure is progressive (the names are disappearing slowly) just as imaginary portraits are built up slowly. It is the time of painting what both strategies share. On one hand erasing the names, faces another painting. And the act of painting portraits from fragments, that is to say imaginary portraits that serve no real face and, simultaneously, to all, is a form of erasure. Both are forms of disappearance.

SERIES “DOBLE ÁLBUM DE FAMILIA (UBICUIDAD)”Oil on canvas and digital photography. Variable dimensions

Thinking about rebuilding the absence I find the gradual disintegration of my memories. My only strategy against forgetting falls in the same vacuum disappearance.

Again I refer to painting as a way of remembering and forgetting circulate. Returning to the formula to persevere in an attempt impossible.

I take a negative of a photograph of my family. Then I paint the negative (as close to the original), oil on canvas. That canvas, using digital methods, it become a photographic positive, so the end result is a photographic image from a NEGATIVE PAINTING.

Finally, I disappear I erase the negative and that gave rise to the picture. Annulling it in any case to be used any more, no way. The painting, therefore, as resistance to the imminent demise of a single image.

This is a baroque play of light and shadow in the end nothing is

what it seems in their pure and evidence: a perfectly readable from which, however, can not finally know "how it's done" exactly. In an age fascinated by what might be called the ultra-vision technology, these days hypervisuality mesmerized by technology. In this sense, the practice of painting is something of a poetic act of resistance. Pinto to achieve, not only a photo-realistic image, to the hyper-realistic photographic mode, but I paint a photographic negative (without hiding it in no time pictorial material) to get finally a picture photographic literally.

Oil on canvas, 24´´ x 18 ´´

Digital Photography inverted negativeVariable dimensions

Digital Photography inverted negativeVariable dimensions

Oil on canvas 32 ´´ x 23´´

Oil on canvas 32 ´´ x 23´´

Digital Photography inverted negative

Variable dimensions

Oil on canvas 32 ´´ x 23´´.

Digital Photography inverted negative.Variable dimensions

Oil on canvas 40 ´´ x 28´´

Digital Photography inverted negative.Variable dimensions

POSTHUMOUS SELF-PORTRAIT oil on canvas, 39´´ x 54´´

I've painted lying, dead, playing for time, go ahead. Remember an event that has not yet taken place. The painting, then, advancing in a while (other), presenting an image to be retained, but not yet gone.

"Plinio indicates that the painting was born when they first purse line is the shadow of a man: sign both the absence and the presence, origin, despite everything away. Art history is the dialectic of the difficulty to realize that instant of desire. 'Victor I. Stoichita: A Brief History of the Shadow, ed. Siruela,

Madrid

EVANESCENT DRAWINGSGraphite pencil on paper

It is a reflection on the idea of time, time that changes in the drawing. They are images of small moments, fleeting, lasting as little as the movement of smoke constantly moving in space, now these images have become drawings in a long period of time but they describe a precise moment.

Plinio the old tell us... "held a contest to determine which of them was the greatest artist. When Zeuxis unveiled his painting of grapes so delicious and tempting appeared that birds flew down from the sky and tried to peck. Zeuxis then asked to run the curtain Parrasios of his painting, only to then reveal Parrasios the curtain itself was a painting, and Zeuxis was forced to concede victory to his opponent. Zeuxis was rumored that he had said: "I have deceived the birds, but Parrasios I have deceived me. "in other words, while his work had managed to fool the eyes of birds, the work of Parrasios had deceived the eyes of an artist."

Reflection on realistic painting and realism in painting. ¿What is real, painting of a fabric or canvas fabric?

CANVAS ON CANVASdiptych oil on canvas, 31´´ X 45´´

www.paolaromerosotelo.blogspot.com.eslapizypapel1@yahoo.com.ar

PAOLA ROMERO