Manuel Monterrubio. An die Gaffer (To the Onlookers)

An die Gaffer (To the Onlookers) emerges as a project composed of a series of paintings that propose exploring the limits between the beautiful and the enigmatic. Reflecting on image and memory, the work addresses the beautiful and the disturbing as a duality, exploring the tension between attraction and strangeness.

The artistic practice is articulated starting from the use of photographic archives, specifically the so-called 'cartes de visite', which emerged in the 19th century as an element of social distinction, but also as a model to be followed by third parties from different social strata, eager to improve their reputation among others. Many of these images are taken from the so-called 'beauty albums' of Empress Elizabeth of Bavaria (Sissi), a massive compilation of photographs of beautiful women as a sample of the empress's unhealthy obsession with perfection and youth.

After a prior selection, the photographs are subjected to a process of distortion and decontextualization that results in veiled and phantasmagorical paintings, in which representative fidelity shifts towards the implicit and the suggested. In this way, the project proposes a paused gaze that questions beauty ideals, also addressing the problem of visual saturation and generating a deeper vision in the face of the contradiction between the attractive and the strange.

First Prize of the XXVIII Young Painters Contest GACETA Foundation. Curated by: Juan Bautista Peiró.