Enrique Gonzalez

Enrique González - Camilo

Biografía del Artista: After more than three decades dedicated to the art profession, I have my own personal language to express myself, which, however, is constantly evolving. Each of my paintings is executed with the idea of ​​finding an answer to a question that has accompanied me throughout my life: why do I dedicate myself to the work of art? I find the answer to this question by meditating on the origin and the reason for beauty, light and the hidden within the mystery of art. This incessant search, since the beginning of my career, is for me the main driving force to continue with my daily work, and to mature concepts on the various issues that I have resolved, and those that I have not, within my work. My fundamental desire is to create, forgetting the laws that govern the market, to create just because, without expecting anything else. In this way I try to get closer to the aroma and flavor of something similar to what we call freedom. I do my work knowing what I truly want to do, without anyone asking me to and without anyone really needing it. I claim painting as the current language of art, in contrast to the tired and constant ruptures as a commercial tactic of simple spectacle. Sometimes I think that in art everything is done, and that there are no new paths or routes to discover, but I know that this is not the case. A work of art does not necessarily have to be something never done before, nor necessarily something eminently new. I think that art should not try to invent anything, but to imitate the beautiful perfection of a pre-existing nature. For me, what matters is the content, its personal language, its beauty and its message. It is not always possible to write a book like Cervantes' Don Quixote or Joyce's Ulysses, but it is possible to write very good books, rich in content, that show us the strength of the creator. My position in my work is to defend painting and to recapture the best of it, to recover its poetic and metaphorical dimension, its capacity to excite us and make us fall in love, to vibrate with good painting. I am not only seeking to recover painting, I intend to find the transcendent dimension of the sublime. I defend the painting as an object, as an element that moves away from current reality, from a hyper-connected world, where the human is being left aside to give priority to technology. I defend the painting as a physical entity, which does not need a connection to any type of network, it is independent and therefore provides, and I believe that it will provide in the future, a freedom that we are gradually getting rid of almost without realizing it. The control of people, and of all the acts that we carry out in our daily lives is increasingly monitored, however the space of painting, its contemplation, enjoyment and its execution will certainly become, in the not too distant future, a space of reflection, independence, and therefore of freedom. I sincerely think about the social function of art, as a necessary counterweight to the authoritarian and unilateral tendency of thought that always threatens us from the established power. My work is the result of a mixture of influences, memories, passion for light and shadow, for perfection, excellence, painting, and art in all its forms, always letting my intuition direct the course of my path. Before starting a new work, different images appear in my mind, initially incoherent, but after a work of reflection and observation they find their place, until the final result is revealed to me. My love for classical art is deep, especially for Spanish and Italian artists of the Renaissance. Using images created by some of the great artists of history in my work gives me the measure of where I am, and helps me to delve deeper into the very essence of my work. It is important for me to reveal how the classical works that I use to create my compositions are made, in this way I try to relearn the different ways of doing things in art, and thus clearly dispense with superficial elements. With this way of constructing my work I try to offer the viewer a compact image, with visual strength and a special appeal that offers the viewer a mixture of symbols or metaphors that, by association of ideas, lead him to form his own conclusions. I like to allow my paintings to have open readings, and to resonate on various levels, but I try by all means to ensure that it does not remain just a pure aesthetic exercise. Everything that appears or remains hidden in my paintings has a reason for being and I make few concessions to the accessory. The images that appear in my work are generally familiar and known to the general public, but suddenly, when observing them closely, they offer a sense of mystery, where the everyday coexists with the strange, and the real and the fictitious create a discourse between them. I consider it unavoidable and necessary to maintain a halo of secrecy in them, for me it is also important that the work always contains some hidden loophole that we can never enter, and we cannot manage to explain it clearly. For this reason, there are sometimes parts of the painting that remain hidden behind a gilded wooden frame, in which there is a slot of greater or lesser size. The mystery I am referring to has always been present throughout the history of art; there is something hidden behind all the great works of art, which drives thousands of people to travel around the world to visit the most important museums every day. I wanted to take it a step further and directly cover parts of the painting that I have sometimes recreated myself. For me, the daily practice of the craft of painting, hour after hour, day after day, ends up becoming a meditation, almost a religious act, where the rest of the world with its hustle and bustle is removed from this, for me, noble ceremony that takes place within the four walls of my studio. The search for the origin of the human, for the mystery of life, are also the guidelines that guide me. My paintings coexist with those who admire all these subtle elements that are found in the sphere of beauty. I could say that beauty is a necessity for me, an impulse towards the discovery of a stimulus dormant deep within me, which connects with subtle elements, which are thus incorporated into a special order. EDUCATION AND INFLUENCES I began in the world of art in a practically self-taught way. Since my childhood I had a huge attraction for drawing and painting. When I was barely twelve years old I regularly visited all the museums in Madrid, especially the Prado Museum, the Museum of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando or the Reina Sofia Art Center, which had just been inaugurated at that time. After finishing my primary studies, I tried to enter various official art schools, but due to various circumstances I was unable to access it, and I decided to set out on my own. In the eighties I entered a private painting school, where its director became for me what could be considered a teacher. In addition to painting, this person introduced me to the world of engraving, which would later be of great importance to me, and helped me to channel the creative flow that I possess, giving order to my ideas to help me build a life project as an artist. In this same decade, I entered, as a student, the Brita Prinz Arte gallery-workshop, a pioneering gallery in Spain, located in Madrid, where an engraving workshop and an art gallery share space. I remained in this gallery for five years, receiving engraving and lithography classes. This space held exhibitions of both new and established artists dedicated to graphic work. Through this channel I got to know great artists established both nationally and internationally, who transmitted their experiences and knowledge to me. This gallery was also the place where I began to exhibit regularly. From this moment on, engraving became, for a long period of years, one of the main means of expressing myself. In the meantime, to earn money I worked in various jobs, I was a night cleaner, a pest control worker, a valet at a luxury restaurant, a Spanish teacher for foreigners, etc. Motivated by a commission from the Teatro Coliseo Carlos III in San Lorenzo del Escorial to build two sets, I moved to this small town near Madrid. A few years later, and thanks to my talent for graphic techniques, I began to teach engraving and lithography classes at the Casa de Cultura in San Lorenzo del Escorial, where I remained for almost two decades. In the last sixteen years that I remained in El Escorial, I lived in a house in the countryside, surrounded by dozens of hectares of crops and livestock, with no neighbors around me, no running water and no electricity. This period was fundamental for my development as an artist. They were years of inner searching, of deep artistic experimentation, where my work goes through different currents: abstraction, expressionism, cubism, figuration, minimalism, povera, geometric art, pop, etc. It is a vital need to explore all fields of art. I read compulsively, without an established order, everything that falls into my hands, books on aesthetics: Stravinsky, Tápies, Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Tristan Tzara, Tanizaki... on philosophy: Valmiki, Tagore, Krishnamurti, Nietzsche, Taisen Deshimaru, Lao-Tsé, Ibn Arabi, Yalal ad-Din Rumi, etc. Poetry: the entire Spanish Generation of 27, Rainer María Rilke (who became one of my greatest influences), Walt Whitman, Goethe, Schiller, Hölderlin, Rimbaud, etc. Motivated by an incessant need for knowledge about art and artists, in 2006 I began the project of publishing a magazine called Grabado y Edición, dedicated to the dissemination of engraving and art editions in Spain and abroad. With the aim of giving the widest possible diffusion to this publication, and collecting exclusive information on all kinds of creators, I travel the world participating in various international art fairs (MACO Mexico, Art Basel-Switzerland-Miami, ARCO, Estampa…) where I make contacts to interview representatives of institutions and museums, as well as artists of international prestige, such as: Paula Rego, Pat Andrea, Gao Xingjian, Jannis Kounellis, Francisco Toledo, Liliana Porter, Kara Walker or Georg Baselitz, among many others. But this exciting work gradually became a heavy burden for me, and finally became an oppression due to the lack of time to paint. After seven years dedicated to this work, I decided to stop and focus on my artistic career. Shortly afterwards, the Ankaria Foundation in Madrid, dedicated to the dissemination of art, acquired the magazine and I continued my path as a painter to this day. MUSEUMS AND COLLECTIONS THAT HAVE HIS WORK: Reina Sofía Museum of Art – Madrid National Chalcography of Spain – Madrid National Library of Spain – Madrid Presidency of the Government of the Community of Madrid – Madrid City Council of San Lorenzo de El Escorial - Madrid Congress of Deputies-Madrid Fuendetodos Goya Foundation, Fuendetodos – Zaragoza Hernandianos Studies Center – Elche CIEC Foundation, Betanzos – A Coruña Garriges Walker Collection – Madrid Jimenez Godoy Collection - Murcia Tolima Art Museum, Ibagué - Colombia Atelier Presse Papier – Quebec, Canada Aurillac Museum of Art and History – France The Hispanic Society of America – New York.

In these works, the gaze through a hole is not just a physical action, but a symbol of curiosity, desire, and sometimes transgression. The characters who spy from the darkness are secret observers, immersed in the contemplation of private scenes, undetected. This act of looking without being seen confers on the viewer a silent power, a sense of mastery over the observed, often reflecting the complexities of human desire.