Narcissus in a Circus arena

 I had, and still do, a fixation to make up stories to draw. The first image of Narcissus in an arena was born on the occasion of the mirroring of two mime acrobats in front of a mirror, where one was pretending to be the mirror-image of the other.

The strong light and the sounds of the circus gave me images. Every pretentious accident of the acrobat made the fear of the viewers rise. The glance of an animal did too. With a fixation to my theme, I would find anything that could be turned in an arena. Even the small circle of the game made me draw. Those moments everything started and changed. The end of every work was the beginning a new adventure.

I wasn’t particularly interested in the theoretical part of Narcissus’s myth, nor in the way that historians presented him – like a rebellious youth – in isolation and away from everything, as I was in that first picture that first touched me and caused the rest. Through those Siennas and Ombras with those reds I wrote down what happened to me between the summer of 92 until now the autumn of 95.

Scenes from tunnels and circular acts of fire. Women enact visions and cards from lovers. Cities in siege and the pieta of Narcissus. I tried to turn this game of characters into painting without believing that I was done with it. I do not know why a particular picture insists coming back. Neither what happened in that particular image of the show. All of the symbols that I carve on solid colour come back in my drawings in a try, perhaps, to keep as much as possible the feeling of that first feeling.  With those symbols, those colourful signs I tried to show the power of that first cause that placed me in that game. Their power and hybrid allegory is based on the metamorphoses and the explanations of others, which is why I believe that fantasy has a kind of innocence that does no wrong but simply gives passion to the sighting of that powerful image.