Every canvas is like a machine for alchemical experiments. What is hardly connected in the world of art, in the works of Mario Dávalos finds an ideal common, though not always smooth form. Here the following are mixed together: painting matter and photographic frames, the work of imagination and reporter's curiosity, a story about nature and civilization.
1. See the light
A dense flower meadow fills the lower part of the large-format canvas. We watch tangled stems, bent leaves, thickets of pastel purple grass, bleached yellows and oranges. Subsequent glances at "Jardin privado" (oil on canvas, 2025) bring discoveries of more details, also those of a different order: a fragment of the human face hidden in vegetation, and a piece of a bird's beak or wing leaning from behind the leaves. However, what really attracts attention in this part of the picture is the inner light, a kind of glow enclosed in dense, thick painting matter. The top part of the painting does not shine so brightly, although the artist placed a simplified motif of the sun here. "Look where there should be no light, and you will definitely see it," the artist seems to say. A similar effect is used in nocturnes, i.e. night genre scenes. From this is only a step to further painting conclusions: a painting is a kind of experiment machine, an instrument for transcing visual habits and conventions. "My paintings are yes an attempt to present nature in its complexity, but above all they show and test how we see the world today and how we see the images themselves."
