FRAGMENTOS DIARIOS (Daily Fragments)
FRAGMENTOS DIARIOS (Daily Fragments)
DAILY FRAGMENTS is a series of mixed-media works on newsprint that functions as a sutured archive of intimate experience and media saturation. The series is inserted into the discourse of Graphic Syncretism by utilizing the newspaper—an inherently ephemeral and disposable object—as the foundational canvas that anchors the painting to political and social context.
The newsprint acts as the fragmented raw material, merging the front-page news with iconography extracted from pop culture, cinema, and erotic archives. By employing newspapers from Mexico (witnessing disaster and social violence) and Austria (Der Standard, carrying European politics and establishment), the series establishes a geographic diptych that juxtaposes global catastrophe with the private refuge of the female body.
The figures, executed in pastels, Sharpie, and markers, are acts of visual re-appropriation. They focus on women in moments of vulnerability or evasion—from submerged bathtub angst to the pure aesthetic pleasure of form—forcing a critical dialogue where the harsh news of the newspaper (hurricanes, drug trafficking, politics) becomes the unstable background noise of intimate existence.
DAILY FRAGMENTS is, therefore, an exploration of how collective memory (the news) is superimposed, and often supplanted, by personal visual memory (pop/intimate iconography), creating a visual narrative where form and matter are permanently in a state of flux.
1. Paraíso Asolado (Desolate Paradise)
Technique: Pastel and Graphite on Mexican Newsprint.
Concept: A clash of disasters. The intimate vulnerability of the woman submerged in the bathtub is set against the front-page coverage of the Huracán Otis catastrophe. The work merges personal psychological turmoil with large-scale environmental and social collapse.
2. Icon/Political Sutures
Technique: Charcoal and Pastel on Mexican Newsprint.
Concept: Consumption, fetish, and the intervention of desire. The erotic figure is superimposed onto the political news story, yet the printed word "DESEO" from the newspaper remains visible, intentionally incorporated as a conceptual driving force. Charcoal and pastel contrast the ephemeral nature of the newsprint with the emotional intensity and control exerted by desire—both aesthetic and political—over the body's narrative.
3. Star Trek: Utopian Overlay
Technique: Sharpie and Markers on Austrian Newsprint (Der Standard).
Concept: Desire and evasion. An iconic figure of American science fiction (Star Trek), representing global utopian ideals and technological escape, is rendered over the details of local Austrian political life. The piece contrasts the fantasy of a post-scarcity future with the gritty reality documented in the daily press.
4. Bathroom Refuge
Technique: Sharpie on Austrian Newsprint (Source varies, inspired by Mexican Cinema).
Concept: The space of evasion. A woman, fleeing domestic violence, seeks refuge in the privacy of the bathroom to smoke a cigarette. The work uses the body's momentary isolation to contrast the local European newsprint (the background noise) with the private, raw violence often documented in other geographical contexts.
5. The Aesthetic Appropriation
Technique: Chasrcoal and pastel on Mexican Newsprint (Inspired by French cinema).
Concept: A reflection on formal pleasure. This piece openly documents the artist's visual attraction to the forms captured by a French photographer. By rendering the figure onto newsprint, the work challenges the separation between "high" aesthetic appreciation and the raw, utilitarian nature of the media support.