Morralla
In Morralla, his sixth exhibition at Galería Alegría, Jorge Diezma (1973, Madrid, ES) presents his latest marine still lifes, which continue the extensive work that the artist has been developing throughout his career regarding the tradition of nature morte. Specifically, over the last two years, he has been focusing on the maritime sub-genre, creating landscapes in which he situates some liminal characters who curiously find their settlement outside their place of belonging, although not far from it.
The fishes, fruits, stones, suns, clouds, and tormented seas that we find in these paintings are a good opportunity to stop our gaze and detach it from the efficiency that usually animates it. These quite intriguing fishes are depicted lost and adrift, painfully close and out of their environment at the same time: they exist in a state of limbo, but they don't appear to be dead, almost like zombie creatures, and invite us to resonate with the delicate balance between the inevitability of tragedy and the absurdity of humor in the human life experience.
Diezma's latent aim is to question the possibility that things do not entirely match up with themselves. He says that anything can serve for the deepest estrangement, because everything is strange as soon as it is stared at long enough. Diezma conceives painting precisely as the privileged medium to make us aware of this strangeness by pointing out the particular relationship generated between matter and representation. Moreover, the operation of removing the animal from its environment goes hand in hand with the particular strangeness originated by the coercion to which humans subject nature when they represent it for their purposes, be they aesthetic or otherwise.
Jorge Diezma usually refers to his pictorial interests by relating them to the concept of anachrony. The maritime sub-genre of still life was originated in Italy in the XVII century and has humble origins: the painter uses it to create a time connection between then and now and to propose a contemporary re-popularization of painting.
To companion his extravagant views on painting, over the years, Diezma's work has covered many sizes and styles, varying between enormous works and miniatures, as well as ranging from detailed still lifes painted in the manner of baroque chiaroscuro, to portraits of animals, to colorful abstract paintings, through psycho- fauvist landscapes, up to this series of marine still lifes, which draw on a double reference: the Neapolitan still lifes of the 17th century, where the Baroque tradition pointed in a direction that has tended to be interpreted as downward, and the avant-garde still lifes, also Italian, explored by masters such as De Chirico, or his much-loved De Pisis.
Diezma's work can be interpreted through many lenses, however, he is aware that in the same way that he adduces any motivation, he could also point out other different ones, because he considers them no more than crutches that are of little use for the main thing, which is to stand in front of a painting and look at it (or paint it!).