Barrio Escalante, San José

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Alegoría, by Flora Zeledón. A centrifugal, horizontal force sweeps the gaze across the canvas, where a suspended body appears caught between emerging or completely dissolving into pictorial matter.
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Flora Zeledón

AlegoríaSold

Year
2016
Technique
Acrylic/Canvas
Dimensions
76 × 102 cm
Status
Sold
Palette
midnight blue, vermilion red, golden ochre, bone white, deep violet
Brushwork
Rapid horizontal sweeps combined with dense impasto applied with a palette knife and splayed bristle brush.

Curatorial analysis

A centrifugal, horizontal force sweeps the gaze across the canvas, where a suspended body appears caught between emerging or completely dissolving into pictorial matter. At the core of this tide of swift strokes, a serene profile surfaces with half-closed eyes and an absorbed countenance, anchoring the human weight of the painting against the abstract gale that envelops it.

The structure rests upon a taut diagonal slicing the rectangular format from the upper right quadrant toward the lower center. Along this axis, an anatomy unfolds, merely hinted at through fractured planes and luminous glazes. The torso smolders in vermilions, oranges, and fiery ochres, sharply silhouetted against a cavernous expanse dominated by nocturnal blue, deep violet, and dense blacks. This chromatic confrontation between the fleshy warmth of the figure and the impenetrable cold of shadow generates a dramatic chiaroscuro, wherein light emanates not from an external source, but from the very friction of pigment against canvas.

Toward the base, the impasto breaks into dry, sharp incisions of spatula and bristle. Calcareous marks, broken whites, and pale earths shatter like crests of foam or mineral shards, dismantling any spatial certainty: it is impossible to determine whether the body navigates an aquatic current, cuts through a nocturnal squall, or inhabits the formless territory of the subconscious. Scrapes and horizontal sweeps intensify the sense of continuous passage, denying the figure static permanence.

"Alegoría" functions as the record of a suspended threshold. The human form does not assert itself as a finished portrait, but rather as a lucid presence momentarily resisting the disintegrating force of its surrounding space and its own vital momentum.

Alegoría

More works by Flora Zeledón

43 works

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