Lonchas

Growing up in Ávila, a region of Spain where meat consumption is part of the culture, and where the meat industry comprises a significant weight in the region’s economy, has led me to focus on the aesthetics that meat generates as a commodity. I have obsessive thoughts with the processes of fragmentation, packing, distribution and exposure of animal bodies under the meat label, with a special focus on processed meat and the simulacrum of fake meat. The manipulation and perception of materiality interests me more than in its production.

Fragments of a brushstroke make up the lonchas paintings. The first step of this process is to create a tridimensional brushstroke with a mix of air-dry clay, PVA, and shredded waste materials. Once the mixture is almost dried, I use an electric food slicer for fragmenting it mechanically into slices (lonchas) which are displayed in the natural reading order for western cultures, from left to right, top to bottom. The resulting object generates an image that perhaps leads the viewer to question what it means to paint a painting, or how matter is presented in the contemporary world, or the perception of ordinary consumption, or a different way of seeing, anything or not at all.