In Plain Sight: Ernesto Cánovas
Halcyon Gallery, 148 New Bond Street, London, UK
14 May – 7 July 2024
Last week, I discovered a Spanish artist I didn’t know about, Ernesto Cánovas, at Halcyon Gallery in Mayfair. His work is part of the current exhibition, ‘In Plain Sight,’ which ends today Sunday and features works by six artists in total.
Ernesto Cánovas is a visual artist celebrated for his unique approach to painting. Influenced by history, cinema, and popular culture, Cánovas sources images from both old and new media to produce evocative, semi-abstract paintings that capture passing moments in time.
He explores the concept of appearing and disappearing images, resulting in a transient aesthetic with a dreamlike quality. His repertoire of vintage iconography, sun-drenched photography, and jolts of bright colours evokes an emotional response from the viewer that falls into the poetical realm.
After digitally manipulating and decontextualizing the initial visual through processes involving reduction, magnification, and cropping, he transfers these adaptations onto wooden panels. The lifelines of the painting’s surface add an organic feeling to his works and form part of the painting’s inherent memory.
Cánovas skilfully blends ‘noble’ materials like wood, aluminium, marble, and ceramic with more industrial ones like plastic and rubber, creating a blend of two-dimensional images to achieve three-dimensional effects through his articulation of light; wood absorbs light, while aluminium reflects it.
His series “Botanic” is suggestive of the photograms, or ‘Rayographs,’ produced by Man Ray in the 1920s. Photograms result from light exposure experiments, where light-sensitive material captures the essence of an object’s presence without a camera. Further experiments by Cánovas explore colour-field abstraction, akin to the work of Gerhard Richter or Mark Rothko. Though part of the same series, “Botanic,” the artist invites us to view the work as a botanical fragment or a close-up.
Alongside Ernesto Cánovas, you can find the work of his wife, Gracjana Rejmer Canovas, consisting of various abstract shapes made of fabric that greatly contribute to the overall emotional and sensorial effect created by Ernesto.
If you’re free this weekend, pop over and enjoy the work of both artists on the lower ground level of the 148 New Bond Street Halcyon gallery.
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