METROPOLI. Hyperrealistic fever

Jose Miguel Palacio

April 29, 2013

Trains by José Miguel Palacio (detail of ‘Trenes Alstom, serie 100, en estación Puerta de Atocha’), the pictorial nudes by Nadav Kander (‘Michael’) and the monumental Madrid by Paula Varona (detail of ‘Tensión Intangible II’).

In addition to the Thyssen Museum, 3 other exhibitions play with the obsessions, intentions and themes of hyperrealism and aim to deceive the viewer: photography or painting?

Between the warmth of the public and the lukewarmness of the critics, more ‘pop’ than ‘pop art’ and devoted to reflect a superlative reality. Hyperrealism is the ‘sensation’ of the artistic season (with the permission of the exhibition on Dalí, at the Reina Sofia, which has just debuted) thanks to the retrospective exhibition, already a best-seller, that the Thyssen Museum is dedicating to it.

The compulsive and meticulous portrait of the everyday, ‘re-represented’ through paintings that take as a model photographs of reality, gives rise to works that overwhelm by their technical perfection and provoke strangeness by their ‘dehumanization’. The taste for reflection (in bodywork, glass, mirrors) and perspectives so ‘in HD’ that they do not exist (neither for the eye nor for the lens) complete in broad strokes a current that seduces the viewer but that is often singled out for its, supposed or not, lack of intellectual density.

In case the candies of Robert Bernardi, the cars of Don Eddy or the telephone booths of Richard Estes at the Thyssen have not been enough for you, we propose three other appointments with works in which the pictorial and the photographic are confused and that will test your perception.

Album of urban Madrid. If the American masters of this movement, born at the end of the sixties and baptized as ‘photorealism’ by the collector Louis K. Meisel, recreate themselves in the imaginary ‘made in USA’, the exhibition ‘Urban Hyperrealism’ does the same with contemporary Madrid. “I’m interested in everything that happens in a cosmopolitan and global city, its socioeconomic and cultural development, and especially the means of transportation,” explains the artist, José Miguel Palacio, whose obsessions are palpable in the 29 paintings on display. Among them, brushstroke-based snapshots (and thousands of photographs in preparation) of Barajas T4, the Gran Vía ‘trapped’ in the windows of an EMT bus, or the AVE resting at Atocha Station. Ansonera Gallery (Alcalá, 52) until May 25.

The reverse path. From Madrid to Malaga, from urban to intimate portraits and from painting posing as photography to the opposite. At the Museo del Puerto hang the thirteen photographs that make up ‘Inner Condition’, a series of nudes by photographer Nadav Kander that ‘cross-dress’ as canvases for their colors, textures, light and composition.

Moreover, they are born as heirs to a long-standing pictorial debate on the representation of the body: the classical, idealized beauty of artists like Michelangelo versus the realism of Rembrandt’s washerwomen, the prostitutes of contemporary artist Marlene Dumas or the ordinary, imperfect people of her contemporary, Jenny Saville. “I always wanted to photograph nudes that would provoke more than just a basic reaction to a naked figure,” writes the author. The viewer feels exposed, almost like the model, to moments of stark intimacy.

EL PAIS. Hyperreal Madrid

Jose Miguel Palacio

April 26, 2013

But, this… is it a photo or a painting? That’s the question many people probably ask themselves when they see José Miguel Palacio’s paintings. There you have them: the high-speed trains in Atocha, the cars stuck in Gran Vía, the planes in Terminal 4, the downtown shop windows, the neon lights, the pure Madrid life captured with total accuracy in his canvases, which are on display at the Ansorena gallery (Alcalá, 52) until June 1. It gives the impression that one could enter the painting and take, for example, a city bus.

It is hyperrealism: after the invention of photography, modern artists, from the impressionists onwards, began to move further and further away from the faithful representation of reality and started to get into the twists and turns of abstraction and concepts. But then, in the sixties, the photorealists or hyperrealists arrived, who not only reflected reality as it is, but also took a photograph as a model.

But what is the point of creating an image that a camera can already create? Indeed, photography is what best reproduces the scene in front of you,” explains Palacio (Zaragoza, 1950), “what happens is that our work at a certain distance is totally photographic, but when you get closer it becomes a painting. You can see the brushstroke perfectly. That’s where you can appreciate our work, and that’s the good thing about it, because if you didn’t appreciate that nuance, what we would have is a mere photograph”.

Although the reality is becoming increasingly blurred, Madrid has been very hyperrealistic lately: a retrospective of the genre can also be seen at the Thyssen Museum around this time,

Hyperrealism 1967-2012, where, as in Palacio’s work, what predominates are urban and popular motifs. “What we do is to capture what we are living,” says the painter. “There have been times when we have painted farms or naval battles, because at that time those stories were being lived. Right now what is being lived is the urban and I think it is very good that we are a reference of the time we have lived for posterity. We are reporters of this time. And what better way to date an image than advertising posters or automobiles, which are frequent in Palacio’s paintings. “License plates, advertisements, billboards are real, and they can temporarily position a scene with a margin of error of about five to ten years.”

Gran Vía Shop Windows

The precision with which the reflections are reproduced is very striking, one of the painter’s favorite effects: shop windows or bus windows in which the city streets are reflected, the playfulness of the light. “In reality the reflection is always there, we do nothing more than capture it. When you look at a photograph you don’t notice the reflection, because it’s taken for granted. But here it catches your attention because we have painted it with precision.” When Palacio walks through the city and sees a scene that interests or moves him, he takes note of the space-time coordinates and returns another day at the same time (to have the same light) to take several photographs, which will serve as a model. “We need an education to look at what happens on the street,” he says, “we tend to perceive more than other people, when we look we see many things that for others go unnoticed. That’s because we look for them.

IBERARTE. The `Altaria’ embarks on its journey

Jose Miguel Palacio

May 16, 2011

The Fundación de los Ferrocarriles Españoles and the Zaragozan artist José Miguel Palacio, signed an agreement in which Palacio, gives to the institution his work ‘Altaria entering the Puerta de Atocha Station’ for a period of five years. This work, an oil on canvas 195 x 130 cm. and presided over the exhibition “The Railway in Art, Prints and Paintings of the nineteenth to twenty-first century”, which was held in April 2008 at the Railway Museum.

Jaime Barreiro Gil, managing director of the Fundación de los Ferrocarriles Españoles, and the artist from Zaragoza, José Miguel Palacio, have signed a collaboration agreement at the foundation’s headquarters, located in the Palacio de Fernán Núñez, with the aim that the work ‘Altaria, entering the Puerta de Atocha Station’, can be exhibited for a period of five years at the foundation’s headquarters. This is intended to stimulate interest and research on the past and recent history of one of the most important industries in our country and, at the same time, the influence that the Fundación de los Ferrocarriles Españoles has had on the creation of art, thus placing its documentary collections at the service of the city.

The joint agreement of both parties serves to contribute and increase knowledge and sensitivity in the fields of our history and that of the railroad, delving into the significance and impact it may have had on the population and urban centers, until reaching the high speed, as well as to investigate the progress and knowledge of our researchers and engineers in this type of transport to the present day.

It is an attractive way to reinforce the dissemination and heritage value of our historic-artistic collections on the national and international scene. The agreement, which is valid for five years, will hopefully be the beginning of a collaboration that will generate exhibitions, publications, seminars and workshops for the public interested in the evolution of this medium, in which Spain is one of the most advanced countries and full of possibilities.

About the Fundación de los Ferrocarriles Españoles:

The Fundación de los Ferrocarriles Españoles is responsible for the recovery, custody and dissemination of the historical, cultural, scientific and technological railway heritage. It was established on February 20, 1985 by the National Network of Spanish Railways (RENFE) -currently split into Renfe Operadora and Administrador de Infraestructuras Ferroviarias (ADIF)- and Ferrocarriles de Vía Estrecha (FEVE). Since 2002 it has been a State Public Sector Foundation. Its board of trustees is composed, in addition to the three aforementioned, by EuskoTren, Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat de Catalunya, Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat Valenciana, Serveis Ferroviaris de Mallorca, Metro de Madrid, Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona, Euskal Trenbide Sarea, Agencia de Obra Pública de la Junta de Andalucía, INECO, TIFSA , Asociación de Acción Ferroviaria, Asociación Española de Fabricantes Exportadores de Material, Equipos y Servicios Ferroviarios, Asociación de Empresas Constructoras de Ámbito Nacional, Asociación de Empresas Constructoras de Ámbito Nacional, Asociación de Empresas Constructoras de Ámbito Nacional and Asociación de Empresas Constructoras de Ámbito Nacional.

The Fernán Núñez Palace is one of the most valuable and best preserved nineteenth-century buildings in the heart of Madrid, next to the southern vertex of the triangle formed by the Prado Museum, the Thyssen Museum and the Reina Sofía Art Center.

About José Miguel Palacio

José Miguel Palacio, born in Zaragoza in 1950, hyperrealist plastic artist, develops his activity in the field of painting, photography and sculpture. Numerous paintings and monuments in public spaces and institutions endorse his work, participating and being present in a large number of exhibitions.

His painting shows signs of great mastery and skill. In it he likes to reflect everyday scenes of Madrid, his interests speak of current events and movement.

ALUMNI MAGAZINE of the UNIV. ESIC.

“The purpose of the artist is creation.”

Jose Miguel Palacio

September 1, 2009

– How did you come into contact with the art world?

– I came into contact with the art world many years ago, and at this point, I see it as if I had always been in it. I feel an enormous creative need and I don’t understand my life separated from art.

– You are considered a clear exponent of hyperrealism. However, how would you define his work?

– Although it is obvious that my work, given its characteristics, is framed within the most scrupulous hyperrealism, I also like to define it as an urban painting committed to the present moment. I certainly do not intend to produce in the viewer only the pleasurable sensation of seeing something imitated with extreme accuracy. In my work I look for scenes that serve as a testimony of the ways of acting and developing of any society. And more concretely of the one that has touched me to live.

– Drawing, painting, sculpture and, of course, photography. What drives you to move in such different disciplines? Which of them do you feel most comfortable with?

– I recognize that I am a restless artist, I need to use and investigate in all possible disciplines within the visual arts. And regarding the second part of your question, obviously the one in which I feel more comfortable is painting, although drawing is my passion. Drawing allows me the creation in my composition of the basic image, as well as the handling of the form, it is the foundation. Painting gives me the spectrum of the work itself and above all the light.

– Madrid is one of the main protagonists of your works, presented as if you were seeing it for the first time. What makes it so appealing to you?

– It is a city with a singular personality, but also with scenes and characters that have a similarity with any other big city in the world. Its scenes denote the idiosyncrasy of a global metropolis and allow me to give my work a commitment to temporality in the artistic manifestation. On the other hand, Madrid, more and more, is a city devoid of typicality, which has been phagocytized by its polyethnic and polysocial society, which provides such urban and cosmopolitan scenes, which is ultimately what I am looking for.

– One of your characteristics is the handling of perspective. How do you work with it?

– Evidently by means of a horizon line and vanishing points, although in my work I use a reticular process, since the most important characteristic of hyperrealism is the deformation of the image as a photographic lens would do, perspective alone is not enough to achieve the desired effect, even the freehand is important. As Michelangelo said: “The eye has so much practice that, with the naked eye, without further angles or distances, it is able to guide the hand to represent what it sees… but in no other way than by placing it in perspective”.

– How do you approach the creative process of your works?

– As for the process itself, I have already mentioned the paths I follow. Regarding the choice of the scene, I can tell you that I follow a strict study of it, collecting a good number of documentation, and after an arduous selective process I consider the way to attack on the canvas.

– You have received several awards and recognitions, what do they mean to you? Which one do you value the most?

– In reality, what I value most is being able to face my work every day. The recognitions are the result of years of profession and I already have some of them.

– At a time of crisis like the present, how does one survive in the art world? Is patronage, public or private, important or is the independence of the artist gaining strength?

– I believe in independence more than anything else. Look at the crisis that is now so much talked about, it is a perennial situation in the artist, not only because of the economic aspect.

In these current times, it is good to consider whether the comfort and opulence in which we were led to believe is better than the discipline, self-criticism and capacity for sacrifice that we artists possess.

I believe that this crisis was necessary and that we will come out of it stronger.

– The exhibitions involve a live “test” with the public. How do you feel about their reactions?

– I have to thank the gratifying manifestations I receive from the public about my work. I consider it the most sincere and true judgment an artist can receive.

– New technologies have a clear presence in your work: you regularly use a digital camera, and you have reflected the creative process of one of your paintings in your own blog. To what extent are they influencing the evolution of art today?

– Obviously I am one of those who think that the end does not justify the means, but it is also true, and I consider it so, that the purpose of the artist is creation. Today we have a variety of new technologies that help us in the process of our works.

Avoiding, sometimes, long and complicated steps. In these moments they are necessary and we are grateful for their existence.

– After several decades dedicated to the art world, how do you think it has evolved in our country?

– I used to think that a person, by the mere fact of holding a paintbrush in his hand, deserved respect. Today, after many years in the profession, I believe that art deserves great respect from everyone.

CADENA SER.

The hyperrealism of José Miguel Palacio, painting or photography?

Jose Miguel Palacio, May 26, 2009