Untitled 36

About the Item: Working on unstretched canvas or linen, Carlos Puyol begins with a basic sketch before navigating his way through a composition led primarily by color. Blending Abstract Expressionist, Pop Art and Lyrical Abstraction Puyol’s work is in conversation with 20th century artists such as Frank Stella, Vassily Kandinsky, and Jasper Johns. He paints into the canvas with washes of pure color, cutting his own marks short and changing the tempo of the brush. Puyol creates disruptions, often cutting and then sewing the canvas. Hard and soft edges define the elements of the painting less in terms of shape and more as chromatic moments. Blocks of pure color meet impassioned crescendos of loose brushwork forming disjointed harmonies.
Puyol intends for the paintings to exist as evidence of how he sees the world. As he paints, he is capturing another world that he escapes to while working, “While I’m painting, I can stop time and enter into other coordinates of reality. A slower reality, with a human time-space, different from the fast and fragmented existence stimulated by technological advances.” Enamored with color, Puyol strives to entice one into his conceived world. In works like Untitled 51, swathes of pale peach and white cascade across the canvas, cut by strong linear arches and moments of absence. A deep blue darts and splatters through neighboring peach, ocher and unprimed canvas. Swirls of chartreuse and ocher balance the jewel toned composition. The artist merges negative space with the wall by leaving exposed canvas, forming illusionistic boundaries on the surface and placing primary importance on the palette. Puyol expertly composes tangible symphonies wrought with tension.