Images taken from Facebook or Instagram They serve as a reference for the Spanish artist Barrabás Cruz to simulate in his paintings a digital environment in which he invites one to immerse oneself in a reflection on the way in which social networks configure the understanding of society and its relationship between the individual and collective imagination.
TO Barabbas Cruz it seems “very interesting” What people show about themselves on social media, “It’s a very contemporary idea”he told EFE during a visit for his exhibition “Feed” (Feed), showing in Brussels.
“In the past you showed yourself to three, four or five people, today you show yourself to many people and you have a public profile. I am very interested in that part of us of saying I want people to know this about me”reflects Cruz (1992, Alcázar de San Juan, Ciudad Real).
The exhibition, which moves between figuration and abstraction, is closely related to the Dreamworld given that “Relationships when you paint are very similar to when you dream”says the Castilian-La Mancha artist, who arrived in Brussels eight years ago.
Despite addressing the use of social networks, Cruz pointed out that he is not trying to raise a moral question or point to “problems to be solved”, he simply intends to reflect on it, he insisted.
“These are complexities about contemporary life that interest me,” said the man from Alcazar, who graduated in Fine Arts from the Complutense universities of Madrid and Kunste universities in Berlin, and participated in the ARCO 2022 and 2023 editions.
From the exhibition, which is part of the Art Brussels 2024 programme, Barrabás Cruz highlights that each person comes out with different ideas.
“On the day of the inauguration there were children who were sure to take away something different from what a man or a woman would take, or from a person who has lived in Lebanon or from a person who has lived in Tomelloso,” Cruz observed.
The exhibition delves into the contemporary lifestylethe ways in which people present themselves in society, interests, memory or identity.
On that occasion, his work is not immune to the influence of the cultural references of his current Belgian environment, such as surrealism and Flemish triptychs, with references to the German painter Josef Albers, with regard to color, and René Magritte with respect to color. referring to Belgian humor.
Open until July 19 in the multipurpose space LAB (SPAIN arts & science lab in BELGIUM) of the Spanish Embassy in Belgium, the exhibition is divided into two rooms.
Some of the works are exhibited in the library “Josep Carner”, Catalan poet and diplomat, and there the paintings focus on food, in fact one of the paintings refers to Carner’s collection of poems “Els fruits savorosos”, with which he began the noucentista movement.
The paintings located in the second room of the exhibition refer to the gamblingthe great structures of the past such as aqueducts or mills and also the idea of resistance, as witnessed by the canvas of feet firmly placed on the ground or the column that appears painted in one of the paintings.
The cultural advisor of the Spanish Embassy, Tada Bastidahighlighted the link between the exhibition and the diplomatic legation, such as the references to Carner, who was a diplomat, and also the paintings in which aqueducts appear, a symbol of the European Union that represents solidarity between countries.
EFE
