William Quintana

William is obsessed with iconography, elegance and excessive glamour.I’m interested in the beauty and study of a canon, based on the ideal that advertising imposes on us. I get inspired by images found in photographs, films, advertisements, social networks and other popular media. Not only is the interest in the attractiveness of the portrayed figure, it is also the surrounding environment and what the use of such images represents in our context, which we acquire on many occasions, thanks to digital piracy and black market.

I am interested in the influence of the photographic lens in painting since it is the way in which artists have visualized nature for more than a century and represents an indirect way of observing a place and a lifestyle beyond our reach. I like the appropriation, the use of images processed by other producers, which I manipulate as I please, aimed at presenting to the public something pleasant, feelings of balance, peace and serenity. Attracted by conventional themes such as the human figure and the landscape, I use color in order to create a feeling of permanent warmth.

I use documentation coming from a system whose ideals we oppose, since they stand for a developed system that constantly influences the young generation and emotionally connects it to another culture and social reality that is not ours, but at the same time a longed-for reality. I obtain as a result all this visuality that dialogues about cultural exchange and that tries to impose acceptance.

It is the representation of the duality of an image of the 21st century human nature, a society attacked by commercial advertising through information and desire signals. I address the public responsibilities inflicted by publicity which disrupt our self-awareness and arouse frustration in the viewer by placing them in front of unattainable goals that awaken the motivation and ambition reminding us in every second of our lives that to wish is to suffer. It is an example of cultural resistance built by issues of nonconformity and approach to other realities.

I try to represent a power that intimidates …”beauty”… and admits that we are simply slaves of the false lives that we follow in social networks, of the attractive garbage related to advertising, of the fashion world and the glamorous glow of an unfulfilled promise, of the consumerist aesthetics and the popular culture. This set of almost curse words are the material of my work and I believe it does work for me. In my opinion it is the image of an absolutely stylized, sophisticated mechanism, very distant from our everyday context.