Herman Aguirre

Region: MFA Annual

Website: https://www.hermanaguirre.org/

City / State: Chicago, IL

The emotional and moral issues that surround the images depicted in these paintings concern loss and death. Combining the languages of representation and abstraction, I bring texture to the depictive and affective aspects of an image. I use a variety of techniques and materials to investigate charged subjects and prompt a sense of the fragility of human existence.

The texture is achieved through the thick application of paint. The painting process becomes a confused, frustrated, and overwhelmed accumulation of impasto, which not only gives value to the image but also allows for its proper burial. It conveys both clarity and ambiguity, as the paint grotesquely complicates the picture plane with its seductive yet distancing materiality. The language I develop is derived from a personal state that embraces many possibilities and allows for exploration. Some paintings include references from an archival collection of violent events occurring in Mexico, including images of victims, objects, and locations, as well as my own family photographs.