Lino Lago: Multipolar
Join us for Lino Lago's, our Madrid, Spain artist’s third solo exhibition, titled Multipolar. This exhibition introduces the idea of confrontation of different worlds/cultures—a multipolar world—which these days is challenged and most likely finished with our dreamt idea of globalization. The artist represents these concepts by confronting different and sometimes opposite paths and styles in a single painting.
Lino Lago is a Spanish-born artist, who continuously pushes the boundaries of contemporary art practices. Painting with technically traditional oil paints and inspired by the imagery of classical European portraits, Lago’s work has a distinctly contemporary feel.
The artist began to explore the juxtapositions that arose between the formal realism of classic art and the abstract aesthetics of contemporary art in earlier projects including Paint Over Paint. Whilst influenced by the art academies of the late 18th and early 19th century, there is no doubt that both, conceptually and visually, Lago’s work belongs to the milieu of contemporary art.
In his California solo exhibition Multipolar, the artist treats his viewers to snippets of a portrait through squiggles across monochrome canvases. The audience is left to wonder if a full Renaissance-like painting actually exists underneath the solid block of color? Or maybe the artist deliberately painted small portions of a portrait on a small surface? In any case, the eye-catching series lets us indulge in the juxtaposition of contemporary and classic art.
The distinctly bold abstract line disturbs the conventional portrait form, imitating the mark of a digital brush. But doing so, Lago re-claims traditional artistic methods and, in a way, critiques the contemporary art world’s notions of operating outside of any historical context. Instead, he alludes to the history of art. His distinct minimalist use of line and abstract shape succeeds in creating beautifully striking works as well as discussing theoretical concepts of reality.
Lino Lago was born in Spain in 1973 and graduated from the Universidad Complutense in Madrid. He has exhibited individually since 1997 in several institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art of A Coruña and the deputation of Ourense, as well as several international galleries. He has also exhibited collectively at ARCO Madrid, Zona Maco Mexico City and recently the Toronto Art Fair.
Lago has received a number of prizes and mentions such as the Vilnius City Arts Award in Lithuania and the Artist Award under 25 years of the Buen Retiro Park in Madrid. His work is also present in public collections, including the Harvard Business School in Boston and the Flint Institute of Arts, USA.
