Michel Pérez PolloRio, 2024

Oil on linen

39 ½ x 79 in

About the artist

I could define my work as the search for balance within chaos. A precarious balance. It's the way I see the world around me. Michel Pérez Pollo (b. 1981, Manzanillo, Cuba) is a Cuban painter who lives and works in Madrid, Spain. His minimal yet evocative style serves as a contemporary analog to Surrealist abstractions. Positioned atop simple stages, his vaguely biomorphic forms glow in luminous shades of ochre, tangerine, and emerald. While rigorous and academic, his paintings also recall memories of the artist’s upbringing in the Caribbean tropics and the vibrancy of his current life in Spain. Distinctively, each composition is conceived using miniature clay models which Pérez Pollo then relates onto canvas with oil—enlarging, warping, and exaggerating as he paints. Guided by intuition, he accumulates layer upon layer of pigment, intentionally revealing areas of the raw canvas beneath. This process emphasizes texture and transforms reality into strange, liminal scenes. As a result, his work pulsates with chromatic intensity and intimates a certain insight into the subconscious. Attuned to beauty and balance, Pérez Pollo orchestrates light, shadow, shape, and color into a very singular visual poetry.

About the artist

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