FRUTOS

In Ricardo Gonzalez’s second solo show with the gallery he presents new large and medium scale paintings, made in New York City where he lives and works. Growing up in Mexico City and residing in New York City’s chinatown neighborhood for the last 20 years, Ricardo’s paintings always carry the mood and attitude of life in a big city. In this new collection of paintings the viewer is presented with larger than life solitary male and female figures, depictions of fruit that take on an animated presence and an image of a sinister black cat. The paintings are personal and fueled by the surrounding environment.

They seem to be painted with a rhythmic quickness, leaving the trace of temperament and expressionism along the way. These paintings are moody and charged with ambiguous narratives, that instead of aiming at a specific meaning, they evade one and become open to possibilities. Possibilities for the viewer to insert herself and experience the paintings viscerally and through the language of paint.

Most of these paintings go through various transformations from start to finish. The process is intuitive and open to opportunities, risk, and change of plans, like exploration guided by clues in the paint. The range of ideas that serve as starting points can be derived from a drawing that was made from a film, a part of another painting, or improvisation based on a composition or color scheme. The final image is not one that is preconceived but one that is found through painting.  “Frutos”, the title of the show, serves as a reference to this process.