Dayron Gonzalez’s artworks are intense reflections on the nature of representation, public and private memory, the construction of history, and the shifting nature of identity. Gonzalez focuses on the psychological power of painting in works of startling visual impact and conceptual resonance, characterized by dynamic and mutable formalism.
The subject is humanity – portraits, self-portraits, anonymous figures, historical figures, figures in nature, figures in interiors. Gonzalez’s figures embrace both the profundity and the ennui of existence – popes and presidents, politicians and party-goers, children and the elderly. We feel the melancholy isolation of these figures, balancing static silence and gestural cacophony, underlining the dichotomy implicit in painting – realism versus illusion, image versus meaning.
Aliona Ortega
Miami, february 2022
“Human behavior is the main point of reflection in much of my work. I am interested in the way in which people’s past defines them, and how it gradually becomes like sediment as time goes by, continuously in our memory, mostly shaping us into what we are today, now.
Our personal experiences are not the only occurrences that shape us into what we are, how we react to situations and how we evolve. History as we know it is also part of our past; therefore, it also conditions us.
My work process begins in a very sensory way. I usually collect images that in some way impact me visually. A poster on the street, a photo in a magazine, or simply surfing the Internet can serve as a source of inspiration. I appropriate these images; recontextualize them within my work, taking advantage of the metaphor to give it a new connotation in a new visual environment. Pretending to create a starting point for new stories and thus demystifying the real story behind each of these images.
I also attempt to create situations that lead to reflections on human beings as containers of their own story, but in an intimate way; starting from the premise that everything we consume of the world at first sight works as a kind of mirage. When we observe someone, we perceive features of their physical appearance, but their actions are what define them as a person”.
Dayron Gonzalez
Miami, october 2020
