Lino Lago: Odalisque
San Diego, California – Madison Gallery announced ODALISQUE, Lino Lagos second United States solo exhibition with Madison Gallery. Lino Lago is known for his splashes of color over realistic oil-painted portraits creating a palimpsest of the old and the new.
“I believe the biggest challenge we face now is the correct understanding of our tradition and novelty. So the question is: How original are we? My paintings present the fight between tradition and novelty. This is for me the most important theme in our lives - a universal one. Consciously I sacrifice part of “our modern” originality by painting old masters’ women’s portraits as the base of my works. That part of the painting represents the standard, the tradition, the normative. These portraits are covered by a colorful layer letting us see a small part of it through a single improvised twisted line. I like to see that bright pure color as a symbol of the new, the present, the near… But in some way also as the thing that makes us blind.
Odalisque, is one of the feminine-form representations in Academic painting of the XIXth. century, as we see for example in Dominique Ingres. We can be surprised that his most famous Odalisque was commissioned by a woman, Caroline Bonaparte, Napoleon’s sister. Women commissioning this kind of nudes was something common on that time. Contrary of what we may think women’s nudes were reflections of powerful women I (dare) to compare to FEMEN feminist protesters today (the Odalisque’s being probably bolder than FEMEN) or nudes in contemporary happenings. Dominique Ingres itself was not well understood (accused of archaicism) in his time but revindicated by XXth. century modernity.
This is a rule in History: People can’t see the “whole picture” living in their own times, we need the perspective of time to see more clearly. The present’s noise is distorted by different subjectivities, points of view and interest (part of that noise is the misinterpretation of the past). In my paintings I try to symbolize that matter of fact: We understand and see just a small part of the reality. That clash of views, basically tradition and novelty, is what the Fake Abstract paintings represent for me” -Lino Lago on the exhibition Odalisque
Founded in 2001, Madison Gallery is committed to representing emerging, mid-career and established international artists whom work in a range of media. Inspired by an earnest dedication and passion for art, the gallery consistently exhibits a high standard of contemporary art. Madison Gallery works closely in building private, corporate and public collections thus placing it amongst the leading contemporary galleries in California. Blouin Modern Painters Magazine has recognized our program for the fifth year in a row as one of the Top 500 galleries worldwide.
