Eduardo Portillo: Dream Dust
Past exhibition
Overview
Eduardo Portillo
Chichén Itzá D750, 2023
acrylic on shaped canvas with mirror
112 x 72 x 9 inches
Barbara Davis Gallery is pleased to present "Dream Dust", a solo exhibition by Eduardo Portillo opening Friday April 14, 2023 from 6:30PM to 8:30PM.
How does reshaping the familiar ignite a pull to the unknown? Following this instinct, Eduardo Portillo explores a craving to understand the space around us in Dream Dust. What could initially be a simple material decision becomes a tool to dive into his own mind and motivations. There is awe and wonder behind what typically goes undiscovered, and what is taken for granted – the space in which we exist.
Deeply inspired by his personal relationship with landscape, Portillo’s fascination with space began young, as many fascinations do; when you’re young, your main objective is finding your place, where you are literally and figuratively, and how big the world around you really, truly is. His earliest drawings as a child were maps, the beginning of this itch that can never fully be scratched. A love for physical landscape evolved to a curiosity of cultural landscape, especially as he learned he would be moving from his home in El Salvador to the United States. Everything changes when you move – the space you’ve spent years exploring falls out from under your feet, and suddenly the world around you is a new planet, engulfing, enrapturing. Spending late childhood growing up in urban Houston, Portillo’s eyes widened to a whole new type of dense landscape. Houston naturally is flat – but there is nothing flat about its essence. The man-made landscape was a shock, full of alien metal, harsh corners and lines. From soft natural topography to sharp constructed skyscrapers, the question arises: what is the meaning behind this contrast and what can we do with it?
Portillo’s exploration of this consideration is manifested in intuitively shaped and colored canvases. In Dream Dust, his canvases grow from the wall, points stretching outward like roots under shallow earth. Using a soft natural palette, Portillo emulates the gentle nature of soil, sand, and skin. The shapes have sharp corners and strong edges, often slotted together like a nearly perfect puzzle. The way the canvases interact holds a certain tension; pushing and pulling against each other, there seems to be a buildup of potential energy. Along with this energetic tension, Portillo’s work finds a tension between strength and softness; the use of canvas keeps the space texturally gentle and a little more fragile than it appears at first glance. The wood skeleton of the frame is sturdy however, as are the lines they create, continuing the idea of finding a marriage between contrasts. These shapes are like a secret handshake between Portillo and the landscape he’s spent his life writing love letters to – hills, roads, forests, buildings, fields are all made as alien as possible. What do you think they represent? That becomes a covenant between you and the work itself.
The medium of Portillo’s work is as flexible as its interpretation. After dodging definitions and escaping cloches, his work finds home in something as simple and intuitive as drawing. With an emphasis on line and instinct, he draws with space. There is something beautiful in creating a form from scratch, and something deeply natural about it. In a way, his shapes become humanoid, dictating their own personalities after Portillo breathes life into their structure, placement, and their direction. The lines in Portillo’s clashing and mingling shapes speak to each other like trees in a forest, whispering about the subtleties found in their shadow and tone. The three dimensionality of the work interacts with light in a very deliberate way. The shadows cast are living lines, shifting with the sun (basking like a literal landscape would). Landscapes thrive in their details, gentle secrets begging to be discovered after the initial impact of the composition as a whole.
The details in this work are fresh to the artist himself, as he dives into medium inclusions of mirrors and sand. These two symbols reflect one another and reflect the core of Portillo’s work – the natural elements and the man-made working together to create something entirely new. The glass of mirror is made from sand, a throughline that symbolically speaks to the way the earth can be manipulated. Light and time are both incredibly important to these aspects; the sand falls like a freeform hourglass, recording the time that the mirror captures visually. The way the lighting intentionally hits the works changes it completely, controlling what you can see reflected in the mirror and molding the shadow to new shapes and dimensions. Here, the elemental medium represents something conceptual, and the man-man medium represents something tangible. Discovering more about the medium and himself as he constructs his installation, Portillo uncovers something electric in the most modest of materials.
Portillo’s work is an abstraction of form and of emotion, connecting with each individual viewer differently depending on their own relationship with and love for their environment. Beginning elemental and reaching far into outer space, Dream Dust encapsulates the spirit of the artist and the reverence he has for the world we all inhabit. Whether natural or built, the sentiment we have for our surroundings is inescapable, and the childlike wonder that catalyzes our desire to explore and stake a claim in those surroundings never fully leaves us. With Portillo’s work, it is crucial to get lost in the meditation of the space he creates, because once you’re lost, you’re able to find what unknowns you crave to know.
How does reshaping the familiar ignite a pull to the unknown? Following this instinct, Eduardo Portillo explores a craving to understand the space around us in Dream Dust. What could initially be a simple material decision becomes a tool to dive into his own mind and motivations. There is awe and wonder behind what typically goes undiscovered, and what is taken for granted – the space in which we exist.
Deeply inspired by his personal relationship with landscape, Portillo’s fascination with space began young, as many fascinations do; when you’re young, your main objective is finding your place, where you are literally and figuratively, and how big the world around you really, truly is. His earliest drawings as a child were maps, the beginning of this itch that can never fully be scratched. A love for physical landscape evolved to a curiosity of cultural landscape, especially as he learned he would be moving from his home in El Salvador to the United States. Everything changes when you move – the space you’ve spent years exploring falls out from under your feet, and suddenly the world around you is a new planet, engulfing, enrapturing. Spending late childhood growing up in urban Houston, Portillo’s eyes widened to a whole new type of dense landscape. Houston naturally is flat – but there is nothing flat about its essence. The man-made landscape was a shock, full of alien metal, harsh corners and lines. From soft natural topography to sharp constructed skyscrapers, the question arises: what is the meaning behind this contrast and what can we do with it?
Portillo’s exploration of this consideration is manifested in intuitively shaped and colored canvases. In Dream Dust, his canvases grow from the wall, points stretching outward like roots under shallow earth. Using a soft natural palette, Portillo emulates the gentle nature of soil, sand, and skin. The shapes have sharp corners and strong edges, often slotted together like a nearly perfect puzzle. The way the canvases interact holds a certain tension; pushing and pulling against each other, there seems to be a buildup of potential energy. Along with this energetic tension, Portillo’s work finds a tension between strength and softness; the use of canvas keeps the space texturally gentle and a little more fragile than it appears at first glance. The wood skeleton of the frame is sturdy however, as are the lines they create, continuing the idea of finding a marriage between contrasts. These shapes are like a secret handshake between Portillo and the landscape he’s spent his life writing love letters to – hills, roads, forests, buildings, fields are all made as alien as possible. What do you think they represent? That becomes a covenant between you and the work itself.
The medium of Portillo’s work is as flexible as its interpretation. After dodging definitions and escaping cloches, his work finds home in something as simple and intuitive as drawing. With an emphasis on line and instinct, he draws with space. There is something beautiful in creating a form from scratch, and something deeply natural about it. In a way, his shapes become humanoid, dictating their own personalities after Portillo breathes life into their structure, placement, and their direction. The lines in Portillo’s clashing and mingling shapes speak to each other like trees in a forest, whispering about the subtleties found in their shadow and tone. The three dimensionality of the work interacts with light in a very deliberate way. The shadows cast are living lines, shifting with the sun (basking like a literal landscape would). Landscapes thrive in their details, gentle secrets begging to be discovered after the initial impact of the composition as a whole.
The details in this work are fresh to the artist himself, as he dives into medium inclusions of mirrors and sand. These two symbols reflect one another and reflect the core of Portillo’s work – the natural elements and the man-made working together to create something entirely new. The glass of mirror is made from sand, a throughline that symbolically speaks to the way the earth can be manipulated. Light and time are both incredibly important to these aspects; the sand falls like a freeform hourglass, recording the time that the mirror captures visually. The way the lighting intentionally hits the works changes it completely, controlling what you can see reflected in the mirror and molding the shadow to new shapes and dimensions. Here, the elemental medium represents something conceptual, and the man-man medium represents something tangible. Discovering more about the medium and himself as he constructs his installation, Portillo uncovers something electric in the most modest of materials.
Portillo’s work is an abstraction of form and of emotion, connecting with each individual viewer differently depending on their own relationship with and love for their environment. Beginning elemental and reaching far into outer space, Dream Dust encapsulates the spirit of the artist and the reverence he has for the world we all inhabit. Whether natural or built, the sentiment we have for our surroundings is inescapable, and the childlike wonder that catalyzes our desire to explore and stake a claim in those surroundings never fully leaves us. With Portillo’s work, it is crucial to get lost in the meditation of the space he creates, because once you’re lost, you’re able to find what unknowns you crave to know.
Works
Installation Views
