By Irma V. Arzola, Art historian
Federico Farrington is an artist who investigates human interaction in a mischievous way while manifesting a singular inner aperture. “Entrelazados” is a ludic exploration of the perceptible ambivalence in the human spectacle through the iconographic syncretism of sexual, androgynous, zoomorphic, distorted and fused bodies within indeterminate spaces. The traces of the pictorial process, the history of its becoming, are evident on the substrate’s surface. These constitute a plastic deconstruction that serves as a testimony to Farrington’s plastic development.
From the moment I met Federico, more than a decade ago, he was already creating enigmatic and provocative images with polyvalent interpretations that seem to emanate from a bestiary of chimeras. Farrington conveys oneiric scenes that confront the viewer with the paradoxical nature of existence. “Entrelazados” externalizes his meditations on the social roles and different personas that each individual construct and employs to relate to the other. The indefinite environments contain
mythological figures and circus characters, whose physiognomy embodies their psyche and who participate in narratives about violence, power, and love.
In this new series, Farrington works on a wooden substrate in a manner that reveals the experimental, intuitive, and historical nature and fluidity of his process. The artist carefully considers each stroke, tone and volume manifested, studying their effect on the whole. He intervenes the surface using oil paint and a brush and, at other times, alters it them with sandpaper and transfers stencils with spray paint in order to deconstruct the pictorial technique and presupposed result. The surfaces are rich and luminous, even when the palette is limited to a few colors and their grisailles. The polychrome effect intensifies the feeling of penetrating and participating in a fantastic world that engenders curiosity and incites synesthetic experiences.
“Entrelazados” creates a space replete with stimuli and converges that invite the spectator to reflect, feel and observe attentively. The interstices of form and the distorted, extended, and indeterminate concepts transform the audience into an active participant in uncovering the meaning of each representation.
ARTIST STATEMENT
My creative process brings with it a narrative where various images and topics converge simultaneously from the most mundane to the deep psychological, the ritualistic, the political commentary, the humor, the erotic and the sublime. With the lines and traces of colors, I investigate the planes of a distorted reality that navigates between caricaturistic innuendos to the transpersonal plane. Paradoxically, elements of non-real truth persist in this reading, where the locality disappears in a timeless space and the characters interact in a playful atmosphere with irreverent humor.
The density and lightness of human existence are polarized, acting as a
“pendulum” that moves between opposites or variants; ambiguity and its vulnerability are responses to the “quantum” world of multiple possibilities, to the ever-existing uncertainty of knowing not knowing and above all to appreciating the beauty of mystery.
Federico Farrington
