Suspended atmospheres, glimpses of reality invaded by a sense of mystery, men with restless faces.
These are just some of the characteristic elements that can be found in the works of Julio Larraz, an artist of Cuban origins, active in the States.
His poetics, imbued with a sense of dreamlike mystery and based on an optical distortion of reality, becomes for the artist a means to investigate the facets of our life and to encroach on the imaginative dimension of the dream.
A transposition of this thought can be observed in his work “Above Suspicion” (2007).
The canvas depicts a mysterious woman in sunglasses, who is walking towards a limousine, surrounded by a multitude of elegant journalists.
By carefully observing the faces of the journalists, it can be seen how they sometimes assume unrecognizable expressions, disfigured in their features, contributing to increasing the feeling of estrangement.
These are faces that can recall the transfigurations operated by Francis Bacon, who investigated man in his complexity, inserted in a modern context and continually subject to psychological transformations, which lead to a consequent expressive mutation.
What Larraz wants to communicate is probably linked to the impossibility of being able to fathom reality in its complexity: in fact, there are subjects, people, attitudes, which escape our reading and which consequently also take on more smoky contours.
What is happening to the woman in "Above Suspicion" remains a mystery and we can only give a personal interpretation.
May 28, 2023
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