Juan Torres Zavala Artist’s Statement

 

I’m focused on the creation of artwork that become an “aesthetic-artistic-experience” that arise form these premises:

a) The creation of art, where “Emotion and Ratiocination” combine to originate cognition.

b) Art has significant meaning that originate in a specific conception of the world (The Culture)

c) Femininity typifies an original and unique way to conceive reality (the nude like a symbol of that feminine world conception).

In our contemporary society it is evident the insufficiency of the male conception to affront our present reality; where the construction of our western culture is base on concepts that has been elaborated as that of the male conception. With this I want to say that our history is linear, built by the rational masculine perception. It is since this that my artistic proposal takes the female nudity lake a banner of the other reality conception: “The Femininity”.

In this context I approach a research of the female on the field of painting. I’m convinced that female nudity has so much to offer to art, not only lake a representational subject or like a perpetuation of aesthetic stereotypes, but more like a symbol of the femininity. My nudes are an interpretation of the idea of the feminine, also an interpretation of the nude that bring us to the femininity. Is has been questioning constantly our idea of the female body since these interpretations. Taking advantage of the power of female nudity, I create a work where there are mixed different aesthetic categories, out coming a work of art that it is at the same time attractive and repulsive, coherent and demented, rational and intuitive, and holding a great dose of emotivity; however, always doing this with the limitation of my masculine nature.

 

I’m looking for a restructure of my mental schemes, my idea of art, and at the same time questioning the “Status Quo” of our western perception. Therefore, my works are Icons of the female figure that make evident my admiration for the woman. I share the idea of some theologies that assert that if we need to attribute God a gender that will be the female for all that implies to be a woman; and my work of art is in some way, asserting that. That’s way I believe that it is time to allow more interference, although not exclusively, the femininity like a new way to face reality. I don’t consider my self a feminist, but a precursor of the feminine.

The composition of my paintings emphasizes the importance of the female figure, they are Icons, Totems; they are hybrid works as well the technique: textures (sand, paper, rag carton bore, wax, resins, etc.), pigment, acrylic, oil, encaustic, enamel, tempera, or whatever my work asks me to put in. The support can be canvas or wood.