Overdose Painting

Artwork selected to participate in the "Personal Structures" Biennial, at the ECC, which will be part of the Venice Biennale program in 2022. OVERDOSE Berlin. Night. Club. Alcohol. Jägerbomb. Cocaine. Dancing. Alcohol. Ecstasy. Happiness. Dancing. Laughing. Cramps. Lack of coordination. Sweating. Paralysis. Loss of consciousness. Paranoia. Overdose. Death. White. Blanco’s works tend to escape from established discourses since, for him, one of the latest purposes of painting is that of expressing itself, with a language of its own, without needing any words, just as music does. The case of this work is an exception as it would be quite complicated to get to understand its true meaning without having any conceptual reference behind it. The title OVERDOSE is quite suggestive in itself, but it is advisable to be familiar with some guidelines in order to make it more comprehensible for the audience. This painting gets transformed whereas we go through it; its reading must be done from bottom to top. On its base some gripping and clear forms appear, with different textures that almost remind us of sweets and, in this case, they also evoke ecstasy pills, because of their varied shapes and attractive colours. The clarity featuring the shapes would be a metaphor of the moment of lucidity characterising the subject’s perceptive state. As the observer looks up through the surface of the canvas, this lucidity starts to disappear, and the silhouettes fade, and totally blurred shapes appear, emulating the effects that ecstasy produces in the organism. Some keys to understand the symbolism of this work are provided by the two white shapes with black borders (similar to the petals of a flower). These shapes direct the observer’s gaze to the two possible pathways after taking this pill. One leads to the top right of the painting, where the shapes fade into one flushed representation of the delirium produced by the narcotics. Here, the colours blend into each other, and the silhouettes gently vanish; the ecstasy has reached its maximum splendour. The other pathway, the one that inspires this work’s title, leads directly, through the other petal-shape, to the left side of the painting, where everything is white and the only thing that exists is silence. Moreover, the chronological narrative of this painting should be highlighted because the passing of time has been represented on the same pictorial plane, particularly a lapse of approximately 4 hours, from the ingestion of the ecstasy pill to the fatal outcome. The chronological reading should also be done in an ascending way, going through the painting until it ends in the white plain at the top left. Lastly, it should be remarked that in many paintings by Blanco, white colour represents death (just as green represented death in some of the works by Federico García Lorca). In these works forms emerge within the empty white spaces where death is waiting patiently and encompasses everything inevitably. The conception of the work OVERDOSE is based on the personal experiences of the artist himself, which took place at Club Tresor in the summer of 2020, in the city of Berlin.

Painting:Oil on Canvas

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:120.5 W x 119.7 H x 0.1 D in

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