PRESS RELEASE

 

MIGUEL NAVAS

PAISAGENS DE ERROS II_DE BUCHENWALD A ROBBEN ISLAND

18 JUN TO 31 JUL 2015

 

“No creo en un Arte panfletário,
Pero creo que el Hombre se duerme, Y mientras duerme,
Se despiertan los monstruos.”

Anónimo Espanhol, séc. XX

Some time ago, my attention was caught by an image of the concentration camp at Buchenwald, in Germany, which was published in the Público newspaper [...]. A few months later, I read in the same newspaper that hundreds of thousands of Jews were abandoning Europe and heading for Israel, as the resurgence of anti-Semitism did not guarantee them the necessary conditions of security and freedom... This series of “Paisagens de Erros” is a reaction to this and other realities (racism, walls, certain political prisons) which had seemed controlled, only appearing on specific occasions, but which then began to grow in an irrational fashion from day to day. As was said in Anna Karenina: “That's what reason is given to man for, to escape from what worries him.” In the case of these paintings on paper that I present here, such worries are revealed in the aggressiveness and/or the restraint of the gestures. The results vary from case to case, depending on what each situation arouses in me. 

Miguel Navas