About
2009 Artist Statement
When one looks back towards the past we often assume how things took place. With this said, I think about the structure of memory selection and how this system acts to only benefit the individual. For example, when Ernest Hemingway wrote “A Movable Feast” he wrote it ten years after his experience in Paris. Hemingway wrote the novel based on what he remembered, not giving straight facts or other people’s points of view, but only the overall experience that benefited his autobiographical story.
As a kid I use to hear my parents speak about the places that they came from in Mexico. The way they told stories was descriptive and celebratory. They took pride in where they came from and at times the stories were sad in the way they told them. It’s as if they had a longing for those moments and places that they left behind in order to pursue a better life in Los Angeles. Story telling naturally became influential upon me as a person and as a painter. Telling and receiving stories performs the same function as the process of drawing and painting do in that it activates my imagination. Stories and painting, places words with pictures, allowing me to re-interpret vague but specific visuals of the narrative being told. The narrative allows me to gain access to places, persons, or moments that I have not experience first hand (physically) and connects them with personal experiences. Other sources of storytelling which are highly influential vary from personal narratives coming from my siblings and friends, documentations, movies, comic books, Greco- roman mythology and music, all of which have similar structures of creating stories within their own right that connect moments of the past with present associations.
Although my paintings aren’t necessarily stories, rather they are documentations of the places that I have lived within the last two years (Los Angeles, Rome and Philadelphia) merging these three places with similarities found among one another. Rome has the same sunset and light as that of Southern California. Rome also has a grey and ugly side to it; the smell of piss along the riverbank, the homeless resting along the streets only to be overshadowed by the monuments and smaller tourist sites. Similarities are found in Philadelphia with their problems concerning poverty within the city. The city of brotherly love seems only to concentrate on maintaining areas that market towards tourist and the wealthy with such locations as Rittenhouse Square, Old City and Center City. Among the ugliness and grotesque nature of the city ruins found outside of Philadelphia’s elite neighborhoods, surfaces beauty found in the abandoned homes and muted colored neighborhoods of the immediate areas.
What makes a place special? Is it how we function in that place? Is it the people we meet and the memories and moments that stay with us when we depart?
2007 Artist Statement
As the eighth child out of twelve, growing up in a large family in which resources were limited was the way of life. There were too many of us kids in the family that my parents couldn’t keep track of us all. A television became a substitute for a babysitter as it does with all large families. The house was never empty and always crowded to maximum capacity leaving no room for privacy. Drawing became a necessity and an entrance point into a world of imagination and exploration. Further, with Spanish being the primary language at home and the influences of both my parents that came from Mexico and my older siblings, who embraced popular American culture in their love of music, this provided me with a rich bilingual and bi culture framework.
My current body of work focuses on manipulating abstract elements to function as representation. By appropriating images from traditional paintings and by using formal elements like color, shape, and different treatments of space, I attempt to transform abstract images into representation in their own right. The idea of using abstraction more as the subject rather than (just) the image has challenged me in my most recent work.
Essay by Jeffrey Ryan
contributor to Frieze Magazine
A Journey in Paint
Travelers all know the sweet disorienting feeling of being dropped in a new city, and the joy of discovering it. Many of us cling to our maps in hand, guidebooks and hints from those who have come before us. But it is when we put the map away, that the place begins to reveal its charms. We have to look up, and begin to use the landmarks around to orient ourselves. Where is the sun? Check. That cathedral I passed on my right? Check. The river must be near as I can smell the briny air – there it is. In just a few days, this place, which at first was so alien, can begin to feel as if it is our new town. So too with painting: every blank canvas dumps the artist (most likely near a train station), allowing them to figure their way around. Filling up that blank space is similar to learning a place. Buildings take on meaning, signs – even if in another language – become another crumb leading us out of our new urban labyrinth.
We start with nothing much, and before long, we have more than we ever thought. In Fabian Lopez’s paintings, he began with simple premises of filling up canvases with color and form. Paint grew into structures, structures into cities. But at their core – they are just armatures for painting. The beauty of painting is that is doesn’t need much excuse to get going. Walls, roof, with some sky? More than enough. More than enough in the right hands would be more appropriate. We look at these works like the travelers in town – we don’t know what their purpose might be, and we don’t really know where we are. But the artist is kind enough to give us plenty to look at – skies of blues, grays, and pinks, grounds the same save the occasional verdant carpet.
With all the images bombarding our retinas daily, only painting allows us the time to slow down and the luxury of ambiguity to let us determine what we are seeing. Because it is in this alchemy of painting – where a box can become a house, a pile of shanties can become a city, and these in turn can morph right back into abstraction. Like the traveler wandering about a city, built up over the ancient bones and buildings, we viewers of paintings forge our way towards meaning.The bedrock of painting, like the foundation of a city, is built up of those who care enough to stick around; the paintings that effect us, mixing with the lives we lead; and the things we see, in our eyes and heads. Where these paintings are going we know not, but this journey in paint is what counts. Enjoy the ride.
Jeffrey Ryan