Pepe Pétalo - ECHOES BEFORE LANGUAGE XXL-NO RESERVE

Pepe Pétalo develops a personal imaginary of the artist, a territory where spontaneous drawing, intuitive gesture and memory transform into painting. The origin of his work goes back to adolescence, when he began to draw a little figure with a big nose at the margins of his school notes, on napkins or in textbooks. Those doodles, born almost as an unconscious act, have over time become the germ of a language of his own.

Pepe Pétalo has developed over 25 years his professional career in the Social Work of the disappeared Caja de Ahorros del Mediterráneo, where in his last stage he was responsible for the Culture area and coordinator of the CAM Contemporary Art Collection, currently located in the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Alicante (MACA). From that position, he actively participated in the design and organization of numerous traveling exhibitions throughout Spain, as well as in promoting emerging artists.

Throughout his professional career he has had the opportunity to meet and collaborate with distinguished creators such as Carmen Calvo, Eduardo Arroyo, Cristina García Rodero and Cristina de Middel, the latter President of Magnum Photos (Princess of Asturias Award for Concord). This closeness to contemporary art from cultural management has nourished his view, although his pictorial proposal remains faithful to the freshness and authenticity of the original stroke.

Pepe Pétalo's painting does not seek solemnity or distance. On the contrary, it aims to be a call for a smile, distraction and reconnection with that playful part that often dissolves in adult life. His little figures and doodles, apparently simple, hide a reflection on identity, memory and the ability to create without fear of judgment.

“Universe Petal. Doodles and Scribbles” ultimately represents the public consolidation of an artistic universe that has accompanied the author since his youth and that now unfolds with maturity, coherence and a clear vocation to connect with the viewer from direct emotion, complicity...and why not...humor

Echoes Before Language
This work evokes the memory of humanity's first creative gestures, when the walls of caves became a sacred space to narrate the world. On a composition of ochres, blacks and deep blues emerge signs, strokes and symbols that seem to belong to a lost language, prior to writing. The white shapes at the center function as an ancestral codex, surrounded by gestural marks that recall cave paintings, footprints, rituals and maps of imagined constellations. The pictorial matter, rich in textures and superpositions, transmits the passage of time and the erosion of memory. The work invites contemplation of the origin of communication, where symbol, emotion and mystery still were one and the same.

The marked dimensions of the work are those of the painting once stretched and mounted on the frame. The actual measurements of the canvas are larger to be able to execute its mounting.

The work goes without a frame (professional packaging, rolled in a tube). It is delivered with a certificate of authenticity.

You can follow my work on Instagram
@pepepetalo