Pablo Montealegre

Region: MFA Annual

Website: http://pablomontealegre.com

City / State: New York, NY

My paintings are exaggerations. I draw on classical imagery and popular culture to create hyperbolic depictions of psychological states. I take the license to depict things differently, to complicate stories and provide commentaries on the scenes I make. For instance, sometimes I look to vandalize the solemnity of the Western tradition of academic representation through an embarrassing detail. At other times, a cartoonish character requires the intervention of an element painted almost photographically. I consider these elements and shifts in style as a relationship between hindering ideals and invasive thoughts, or as a way of mirroring the contradictions of contemporary culture and the heterogeneity of our present.