Xavier Robles de Medina
Shakira, Pepsi Super Bowl LIV Halftime Show, NFL on Fox, 2 February 2020

Xavier Robles de Medina has been building a collection of found images from online platforms and printed matter. Through a process of appropriation, these pictures have become part of his own vocabulary as he eliminates all colour and slowly makes changes to their shape and texture. For the exhibtion, Dreams Made Flesh, Robles de Medina translated into paintings two of these images, each of them a composite of four photos. A portrait of Shakira is a collage of different angles of a scene where the singer glares at the audience during her 2020 Super Bowl Halftime Show; as the magic of replication acquires the emotions of the characters being portrayed, the acrylic-on-wood painting looks back at the voyeur when contemplated.

The other image, Untitled, 2021 shows a room that is a combination of four distinct spaces and is occupied solely by furniture and drapery; in the absence of humans, the domestic objects reproduced in the painting communicate feelings of their own. While one painting enacts a humanlike presence, the other frames a conversation between objects that have been liberated of their users.

Dreams Made Flesh was curated by Luís Manuel Araújo