MAZARRÓN / The artist Martínez Cánovas reflects on the demons of society

Fuente: Agencias

The exhibition, entitled «Hic Daemonia Sunt», opens in Town Hall of Mazarrón next November 23 at 9:00 p.m.
Juanjo Martínez Cánovas (Murcia, 1980) reminds us again that «hell is empty and demons are here». The exhibition «Hic Daemonia Sunt» is the continuation of his previous work I.V.E., Inferus Vacuus Est, an artistic proposal where the vices of society acquired the face of relevant characters, leaders and politicians who act on the margins of morality.

In his new project, curated by Giorgio Pellegrini, director of the Museum of Paper and the Filigree of Fabriano (Italy), he looks back to the conflicts that current society is going through and reflects, in addition, on the role of contemporary art in such scenarios . In the words of Pellegrini, «perfect storms of our time (…), financial, social and cultural that force us to cross slippery roads». In the catalog we find other texts written by Ricardo Recuero, Susana Blas Brunel and Sara Torres Sifón.

True to the aesthetics of the Lowbrow Art movement or Pop Surrealism, current «antithetical to intellectualism and the so-called high culture», which also accommodates, in the words of the curator, «comic artists, illustrators, digital artists or hot road decorators (… ), «Martínez Cánovas now represents the capital sins associated with the faces of demons: Asmodeo (Lust); Beelzebub (Gula); Mammon (Greed); Belfegor (Sloth); Amon (Ira); Leviathan (Envy) and Lucifer (Pride). It is, says Pellegrini, «an expressive urgency that does not explain, but asks,» making «knots, conflicts and unexplored paths in our culture emerge».

On this occasion, the artist was inspired by the sixth edition of «Dictionaire Infernal» (1863), the work of the French demonologist Jacques Auguste Simon Collin de Plancy and expresses it through different languages: sculpture, painting and drawing. It is the first time that exhibits sculptural works and unites the three disciplines. The set is completed with pieces made in graphite on paper and oil on wood.

Because the demons are really here, among us, in familiar or anonymous faces. A wake-up call to sharpen our senses to observe carefully what happens before our eyes, interpreting what goes unnoticed. Visual metaphors that evoke the moral vacuums present in society, through works replete with symbols.

Artistic biography

Martínez Cánovas (Murcia, 1980) is an artist of unstoppable career who has made more than twelve individual exhibitions in the institutional field and in the galleries, among which are «Trasmutazione», held in May 2017 at the RVB Arts Gallery of Rome, or «IVE Inferus Vacuus Est «, which was exhibited in March 2018 at the Ermita de San Roque of Fuente Álamo.

All his characters tell a story through original transmutations, through a subtle brushwork that evokes works of the Baroque and the Renaissance, with clear influence of Goya, El Bosco or Francesco di Modena.