Fernando Carballo, Úrsula, 2019, Plumilla, 34.5 x 23 cm.On View: April 8 – April 16, 2021
Ink Conversations
Recent Work of Master Fernando Carballo, In the Pandemic
The new ink drawings by Fernando Carballo (1941), which number more than thirty, summarize his work in 2020, a strange year with introspective looks. Constructed with a subtle but dense pattern of black ink, the artist proposes a world all his own, populated by characters with large faces, deep gazes and huge hands; characters that interact with other similes that at the same time share space with the most diverse pets or personify divine messengers. They talk statically in a space absent from all interaction, where the multiplicity of meanings proliferates.
Fernando with his wonderful drawings gives us his concerns and hopes during this prolonged confinement through a world absent of color, or of a very contained color, which allows us to recreate this strange journey of 2020. His masterful drawing and his characters converse with each other, or with their children or their pets and, in many cases, interact with us, the public, through questions posed in their deep gaze. They ask about anxieties, fears, loves and small triumphs throughout this forced confinement.
With that unique and particular way to sublimate this atmosphere of pandemic that Carballo has, to show us this unusual situation, it allows us to contemplate and be able to converse with his exquisite characters, close to us in some cases, and in others, transfigured into ghosts of a time.
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