José Luis Serzo

José Luis Serzo - The wandering mask builder. Tribute to an awkward silence between Ensor and Solana

Artist Biography: Jose Luis Serzo is a multidisciplinary artist born in Albacete in 1977 and currently based in Madrid. His work has been recognized for its great stories-exhibitions in which he combines various artistic disciplines such as painting, drawing, objects, photography, sculpture, video and literature to tell stories where reality and imagination go hand in hand in an aesthetic universe full of personal symbolism. It is not only the observation of his paintings, which already brings us closer to his particular creative world and allows us to delight in his technique and the symbolism of his message, but it is only a part of a much broader whole. His work is completed with texts that narrate each of his series, with an explicit story in each of his paintings, with drawings, photographs or videos that introduce us into a series of surreal stories where the artist leaves us with his particular vision of reality.Serzo's work is a lyrical journey full of hope, a song to life through imagination and fantasy. He believes in a better and more humane world and translates that desire into his work with a childlike but fully mature content. He builds worlds that transcend reality and, far from being a refuge from a hostile landscape dominated by pessimism and violence, these worlds are intended to be a positive alternative, a hopeful platform from which to approach and transform art and even life.His work has been exhibited in numerous solo exhibitions in prestigious museums and galleries such as Ferran Cano Gallery (Palma de Mallorca), Marena Rooms Gallery (Turin), MCO (Porto), Siboney Gallery (Santander), Blanca Soto Gallery (Madrid) and many group exhibitions in centers such as the Freires Museum in Berlin, Marcelino Botin Foundation (Santander), MATADERO Madrid, Kunstbunker Tumulka in Munich or the Sangsang Madang Art Center in Seoul. His work has also been seen in international fairs such as ARCO, ArteBA (Buenos Aires), ArteLisboa, SCOPE Miami, ArtFrankfurt, ARTCOLOGNE, DIVA Art Fair (New York), PINTA NEW YORK, among others. His work is part of numerous public and private collections, including Caja Castilla la Mancha, MEFIC, the Northern Collection of Contemporary Art of the Government of Cantabria, the Collection of the Faculty of Fine Arts of the UCM, the Municipal Museum of Albacete, among others. His work has been recognized and highlighted mainly for his great stories-exhibitions. In his work, he acts as a narrator of fables presenting other possible universes and building worlds that transcend reality. These worlds, far from being a refuge from a hostile landscape dominated by pessimism and violence, are intended to be a positive alternative, a hopeful platform from which to approach and transform art.

 

The wandering mask builder is part of "Mascarada de sobremesa; El incómodo silencio entre Ensor y Solana", which is the most recent series of the La Mancha artist José Luis Serzo and on which he is still working at present. In it, the mask becomes the undisputed protagonist, as a link between the work of two great painters: James Ensor and José Gutiérrez Solana, both linked to this decorative and camouflage element for different reasons. Serzo has also been linked since his childhood to masks and carnival, and it serves as a hook to deal with themes such as the subconscious, the transience of life or identity itself, themes that are, on the other hand, common in his work. He uses a language characterized by the mastery of drawing, and the strong symbolic load, where we see reflected the dreamlike world of the painter with elements of his iconography such as thistles, masks or the great detail in the landscape.