“Shaman” by PEDRO PARICIO at Halcyon Gallery in London
The painting by Pedro Paricio, a Canarian artist, cannot be understood without the colour, which is its great ally in creating forms, and expressing moods and emotions. But the colour also helps the artist to convey stories and memories that in some way belong to us all. In this exhibition, the artist rescues from the collective memory aspects of shamanism that in his land is related to the figure of a witch doctor, and that is still latently present.
Pedro Paricio exhibits “Shaman” at Halcyon Gallery in London, 27th June – 27th July, 2014, where through his works he reflects on and reinterprets the personality of a shaman as a spiritual guide. Shamanism has existed and will exist in almost every culture in the world. That’s how, past and present meet again in Paricio’s paintings.
Twenty-five canvas are halfway between abstraction and figuration. The exhibition features also some self-portraits of the artist. On the one hand, they represent the artist himself; on the other hand – people, because as Paricio says — we are all different, but at the same time the same. And this time the artist puts himself in the shaman’s shoes. We can also see how a series of symbols and icons connect the body with the spiritual world, and highlights the presence of shamanism that still lives in many cultures, connecting it directly with healing, magic or prediction. The shaman connects people with their own culture from both a human and divine point of view, and this is what the artist tries to show us.
The colour and contrast of Paricio’s paintings have much to do with the light from the Canary Islands, but they also show an evolution in terms of other places the artist has been living in, such as Seville, Ibiza, Barcelona and now London. Although the shades of colours are changing, they keep providing vital energy, at times standing out against intense black backgrounds.
Since 2011, Pedro Paricio (born 1982 on Tenerife) has been represented by the prestigious Halcyon Gallery in London. Previously, he exhibited at Galería Muro in Valencia and Galería Balaguer in Barcelona, where he studied and lived for some years. Apart from being a painter he is a great fan of art from all periods and in all forms. He is artistically interested in everything and from any period: cinema, literature, painting. Simply put, art is his life. With his restless gaze, he shows respect for the great masters of the past, particularly for Francis Bacon and Pablo Picasso, who always “accompany” him when creating. He looks closely at the fragmented, intermittent and fast world we live in, and presents it in his paintings.
His work is represented in important international art collections, and he is now one of the most renowned Spanish artists in London. This October he is inaugurating a major exhibition — “In Praise of Painting” — at Tenerife Espacio de las Artes (TEA), which shows his career as a painter between October 2014 and March 2015. The museum itself was designed by Swiss architects, Herzog & De Meuron, known also for having transformed a former power plant in London in the current Tate Modern.
M.A.
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