About the Artist

Project Description

Noel Dobarganes is an artist who experiments with anthropological concepts through the superimposition of both formal and conceptual planes.

The majority of his figurative paintings are portraits that reference the philosophical tenets of the Renaissance—a time when the medieval overuse of symbolic expressions was left behind, celebrating the renewed relationship between humans as spiritual entities and nature as an organic manifestation of divinity. These large-format pieces often originate from explorations of the female face. Many of his models seem to confront the viewer, revealing souls tormented by an excess of social conditioning. These are women who appear to long for an escape from the ornamental roles assigned to them by millennia of patriarchal domination. As such, despite the sensuality of the forms, this work is anything but hedonistic.

This series of paintings, primarily figurative—though at times flirting with abstraction and formal ambiguity—traverses a significant portion of art history from recent centuries, culminating in a dialogue with contemporary popular culture. The origins are noticeable: what some connoisseurs might perceive as Lezamian metaphors. Latin American Baroque is as present as its heterodoxy; his art is mestizo. It is crucial to remember that painting, in this case, is a catastrophe in the sense that it is symptomatic of what happens to us. Ultimately, Noel's work is pure music, where chromatic luxuries and ornamentation weave vibrant notes of enduring warmth into a dazzling pentagram that lingers and settles.