Silent Conversation About the Work of Lorenzo Fernández

David Rosenberg is an author and exhibition curator. He has published numerous works dedicated to modern and contemporary art. He regularly organizes exhibitions in France and abroad.

David Rosenberg
Paris, feb. 2013

Lorenzo Fernández has chosen to go against the current: this is his way of being contemporary. In the era of technology and digital imagery – where new technologies, graphic tablets, and image processing software define a new “classicism” in painting – this young Madrid-born artist, who practices his art in the manner of the old masters, is on the verge of establishing himself as one of the determinants of the renewal of figurative painting and the contemporary Spanish art scene. He is known for his medium and large format easel paintings that disturb with their realism; works made exclusively with oil and acrylic on wooden panels, without ever resorting to photography or any other mechanical means of reproducing the visible.

But these preferences do not evoke nostalgia or an excessive attachment to the past in his work; quite the opposite. If he resorts to history, traditional craftsmanship, and classical techniques, it is to develop a unique and contemporary pictorial discourse simultaneously. The artist also stands out for decisively turning his back on cynicism. There is a kind of purity and rectitude in him that precludes any expected provocation.

Born in Madrid in 1970, Lorenzo Fernández began studying decorative painting at the Virgen de la Paloma Polytechnic Institute. Later, he became familiar with the art of stage decoration while studying drawing and painting techniques with Ángel Pozo, a renowned teacher. He finished his training by studying four years at the Artium Peña drawing academy, an institution that awarded him the First Academy Prize at the end of his studies. He completed his education by studying restoration, which led him to work on significant projects where he learned the secrets of ancient techniques, an experience he now leverages for his own work, giving utmost importance to the quality of materials used and their durability. At the age of 28, he decided to dedicate himself exclusively to painting and began exhibiting in various galleries, first in Spain and then in Paris at the Taménaga Gallery, with which he has had an exclusive collaboration since 2006.

Lorenzo Fernández approaches the traditional genre of still life and “vanitas” as a 21st-century artist. His work is understood and conceived from the perspective of the work of his contemporaries, such as Gerhard Richter or Chuck Close, whose rigor and surgical precision in some of their canvases he appreciates. He can also be mentioned in the same breath as Jeff Koons or Marukami, with whom he shares a similar concern for formal perfection, combined with a preference for toys and characters from the world of childhood that he incorporates into his works. There are also parallels with Damien Hirst, with whom he shares a fascination for the theme of “vanitas,” and even Warhol, whose famous portraits he meticulously reproduces in some of his works. Picasso’s influence is subtly present in some of his paintings in the form of a character inspired by Tim Burton’s movie, a small silhouette with a cork head wearing a black and white striped vest, a somewhat playful and affectionate homage to the famous sailor shirt of the master from Malaga. Many exceptional names that are impossible to ignore when working in the present. However, when he sometimes explicitly references an artwork or an artist – in this regard, Velázquez and John Singer Sargent frequently appear in his own paintings – it is often to introduce a few grains of sand into his well-oiled “artistic machinery.”

The atmosphere of his works exudes serenity, yet there always seems to be a latent tension, an intangible form of unease or strangeness, akin to the works of Pieter Claesz or Zurbarán. Marcel Duchamp was right when he emphasized that “the person looking at the painting makes the painting.” Here, to fully enjoy the artist’s work, the viewer must also appreciate the research, the art of reasoning, and exegesis. Fernandez’s painting is akin to an ancient school of philosophy, and above its lintel, one could read the words “Let no one enter who is not a geometer.” Because Lorenzo Fernández is not content with simply representing objects; he thinks and questions with and through them. Each thing is also a word, a fragment of a coded and symbolic language with which he expresses himself.

His approach to painting is simultaneously literary, poetic, and philosophical, where sensitivity and reason are always inseparable. In the light and silence, the objects are arranged harmoniously while creating “short circuits” between very different worlds: an old toy and an erudite book, a flower and an electric motor, a sweet and a photograph of a famous painting… Each composition has its reason in the enigma it represents and the disturbance it awakens.

The images are as clean and precise as a reflection in a mirror. In this regard, critics who have examined his work have constantly highlighted how the painter shifts the meaning of sight towards a haptic perception. It’s as if the eye allows us to physically feel the smoothness of a fruit, the softness of a fabric, the opacity of a sheet of paper; as if it lets us touch the texture of skin or caress the grain of wood. Sometimes, the outlines of objects dissolve into blurriness due to the depth of the image. This effect is particularly noticeable in the case of paintings with compositions treated in the foreground and with a close view, or, more rarely, when a fragment of landscape is perceived through a window.

Lorenzo Fernández lives surrounded by objects that appear in his works. Undoubtedly, because they are so familiar to him, he paints them with such sensitivity and acuity. Upon closer examination, one can find in his studio everything that appears in his paintings: empty bottles, toy soldiers, robots, a little monkey figurine, a golden Buddha, astronauts, a date stamp, a bird’s feather, a blue pencil, a small car, a slide, fuses, an old moleskin notebook, a photograph of a bullfighter, and another of a nude woman (censored), a graduated ruler, wooden boxes, a withered flower, candies, and even a folded, faded gray-toned photo booth picture showing the face of a schoolboy, serious, with a fixed gaze, buttoned-up in a shirt. It is the face of the painter.

Sometimes, the precision of a chromatic chord seems to justify the proximity between some red apples and a blue curtain; sometimes, it’s a nod to mythology, contemporary history, or even the artist’s biography that invokes a specific arrangement: a pebble near a bird’s wing, a grumpy-looking Mickey figurine turning its back to a Kabuki theater character silhouette printed on a postcard, a slightly open window and a travel guide.

Another aspect of Lorenzo Fernández’s work that hasn’t been mentioned until now is female portraiture. In these works, you’ll find the same infallible sense of composition and light that characterizes the artist’s still lifes. These are always young women, simultaneously sensual and spiritual. They capture the gaze and create a complete emptiness around them. Most of the time, there is nothing else: only a smooth and luminous background against which their attractive silhouette and proud profile stand out. A deep, unwavering peace emanates from their presence. The result is so meticulous, so precise, that you can perceive the texture of makeup, a tiny stain on a garment, or every detail of their hair. It’s so embodied, tangible, and palpable that you can feel the vibrant, familiar, and unattainable personality of his models.

Lately, this polarity in Lorenzo Fernández’s work – between the discreet appearance of a female image among objects or the full and complete presence of a female body in a space with nothing else – is evolving. The backgrounds of the paintings, previously occupied by drapes, the floor, a piece of wall, or a workshop window, are increasingly filled with “images of images,” whether they are photographic enlargements or fragments of other paintings. The composition’s frame narrows around objects, and there is no longer truly an external element to gauge the scale of what we are looking at. The figurines and toys that, when related to the workshop space or a piece of furniture, seemed tiny, are transformed here into giants that take over all the space, the entire imaginary.

The palette is sometimes bright and sometimes muted. The painter also occasionally works in a very photographic black and white. References to popular culture – particularly film icons – are becoming more present. From the representation of a luminous, frugal, and orderly world, we shift to a chaotic space filled with oversized images that an astronaut or some toy soldiers seem to be discovering. Real skulls mingle with sculpted ones, while iridescent blue-winged butterflies land here and there in the painting.

Although each painting can be seen as an autonomous piece, Lorenzo Fernández believes that the sum of his works composes a kind of philosophical travel journal, an allegorical world. The images respond to each other, creating different paths, different flows that can be read as an “initiation book.”

The artist emphasizes this aspect of his work, where the paintings, like virtual documents indexed on the web, form either a fragmented set or a logical series, an almost mathematical progression according to the relevance of the request. In this initiatory journey, each painting constitutes a square, a mental space to explore different aspects of thought. We are completely absorbed by a unique visual experience where everything seems to exist with even greater intensity than in reality. And, sensing that the things we see are not there by chance, we begin to decipher the artist’s discourse.

The illusion is here to open the door to reflection. A rose petal, an orchid, a ribbon, a toy, a perfume bottle, a letter, or a book – with very little, we travel far, toward madness, happiness, metamorphosis, dreams, myths, doubt, substance, utopia…

 

As it should now be clear, for Lorenzo Fernández – as for other artists who fascinate him – the representation of objects always has a profound philosophical reach. But even before it becomes a pictorial exercise with its codes, uses, and history, everything is already in the painter’s gaze; an allegorical gaze that transforms the simplest arrangement of an object into a text to decipher, a poem, or a score to interpret. It is an invitation to return to oneself and to the world around us; an invitation to a silent conversation..