Hugo Bastidas

At first glance, Hugo Bastidas oil paintings resemble black and white photographs. As the artist indicates, the stylistic approach is both visual and conceptual, "I apply paint to the surface with quick even short strokes that build and amount to the image. The result is that of a blurry monochrome photograph encouraging closer inspection.”

More about this exhibition

This exhibition draws from the artist’s most recent group of paintings, Metamorphosis in which Bastidas uses depictions of water, passageways, and windows into space to indicate change. He alerts us to issues brought about by industry and technology and their effects on society and the environment. Touched by recent natural disasters, Bastidas created Trois After the Flood (2013-14), showing the real-life sanctuary as if it were flooded with water. He created a surreal environment that blurs the lines of reality to form a connection between an actual environmental disaster and imagined fiction.

Bastidas works large – of the eight paintings in the exhibition only two are easel size. The grisaille paintings (images produced entirely in shades of gray) appear at first sight to be produced by charcoal or a tarry substance but are in fact, oil on linen. The painter is also a digital photographer and photography informs the subject matter without affecting the stylistic development of the image – that is, the images are not photo-realistic.