Alonso León-Velarde

Alonso Leon-Velarde’s artistic practice integrates personal history, contemporary subjects, and science fiction to create pictorial symbols that resonate with the residues of metropolitan life in Latin America. Through paintings and drawings, Leon-Velarde explores themes of loss, defeat, celebration, and resilience, which serve as metaphors for inherited modalities of confrontation and syncretism. Rather than descriptive, his adaptive semiotic logic uses associative materials to integrate the picture as a painted gesture, visible evidence of residue, speed of execution, and the slowness of sedimentation. The pentimento technique he uses places sharp, organic, and voluptuous movements at the center of his work, where the action happens at the periphery of the form and sometimes even erects against the edges of the canvas. Leon-Velarde examines how western media travels and permeates South American visual cultures, while simultaneously proposing an imaginative and futuristic alternative to understanding life in a Latin context. Through his work, he challenges preconceived notions and creates a dynamic that allows for changes in impressions and understanding.