Malefic
Product Description
by Luis Royo
NBM 1996.
Landscapes with figures. There are works of art that seduce me by their very presence. Others provoke me; they awaken something inside me that I would rather let sleep. I guess it must happen to everybody.
Luis Royo, with an alchemist's patience and an obsessive thoroughness, makes images that bring out that same reaction of mystification and uneasiness. It's useless to try to figure out the hidden clues, the cook's secrets, the whys and wherefores. Beyond that, there's an uncontrollable vertigo that makes a mockery of theories and rationalizations.
Luis deliberately perverts what he paints. There are sure to be people who don't realize this, who just see his images as a woman with a fantastic background. With a malevolent mastery, Luis works through a classic sort of painting (the landscape with figure) and uses a classic theme (the eternal myth of Beauty and the Beast) - but he turns it around, giving us beauties who are cold and distant, with a look of feline indifference; self-sufficient and yet incongruously attractive in the midst of gloomy settings. These women are the counterpoint to thse sober compositions.
He fills his airbrush with darkness and spreads it left and right with virtuous accuracy. He paints thick, Lovecraftian fogs, the kind that wrap everything in gloom, like vapors from cheesy special effects. He undergoes the penance (or the exorcism) of painting the thousand cracks of an eroded stone, the folds of the skins of mythical animals, the reflections on the surfaces of magic ponds, the sparkle of forgotten metals, the different colors of the bones of some unknown being...and manages to make all of them look unnatural and thus disturbing.
This pile of paradoxes, of wrong appearances, of perverse connections with the collective unconscious, is what disarms the more attentive viewer of this disturbing panorama. The others, those who simply look at the surface, are perhaps just victims taken in by the high quality of draftsmanship that any realistic work of high quality has. And there are those who only want to remain complacently fascinated by the perfection of such images.
An illustrator sees his work disseminated in the covers and interiors of endless publications of all sorts. But it's difficult to get a complete vision of his work. Until now. Enter the maelstrom.
- Miguelanxo Prado, from the Foreword.
NBM 1996.
Landscapes with figures. There are works of art that seduce me by their very presence. Others provoke me; they awaken something inside me that I would rather let sleep. I guess it must happen to everybody.
Luis Royo, with an alchemist's patience and an obsessive thoroughness, makes images that bring out that same reaction of mystification and uneasiness. It's useless to try to figure out the hidden clues, the cook's secrets, the whys and wherefores. Beyond that, there's an uncontrollable vertigo that makes a mockery of theories and rationalizations.
Luis deliberately perverts what he paints. There are sure to be people who don't realize this, who just see his images as a woman with a fantastic background. With a malevolent mastery, Luis works through a classic sort of painting (the landscape with figure) and uses a classic theme (the eternal myth of Beauty and the Beast) - but he turns it around, giving us beauties who are cold and distant, with a look of feline indifference; self-sufficient and yet incongruously attractive in the midst of gloomy settings. These women are the counterpoint to thse sober compositions.
He fills his airbrush with darkness and spreads it left and right with virtuous accuracy. He paints thick, Lovecraftian fogs, the kind that wrap everything in gloom, like vapors from cheesy special effects. He undergoes the penance (or the exorcism) of painting the thousand cracks of an eroded stone, the folds of the skins of mythical animals, the reflections on the surfaces of magic ponds, the sparkle of forgotten metals, the different colors of the bones of some unknown being...and manages to make all of them look unnatural and thus disturbing.
This pile of paradoxes, of wrong appearances, of perverse connections with the collective unconscious, is what disarms the more attentive viewer of this disturbing panorama. The others, those who simply look at the surface, are perhaps just victims taken in by the high quality of draftsmanship that any realistic work of high quality has. And there are those who only want to remain complacently fascinated by the perfection of such images.
An illustrator sees his work disseminated in the covers and interiors of endless publications of all sorts. But it's difficult to get a complete vision of his work. Until now. Enter the maelstrom.
- Miguelanxo Prado, from the Foreword.
