Expanded, imaginary worlds open up around the youthful characters José Luis Cena‘s oil paintings. His protagonists are bristling, splashy and sometimes blurry around the edges, donning homemade costumes and walking through fortresses made of sheets and boxes.
“I believe that delving deeper into the subject of children in my paintings came about because I had two children,” the artist tells Colossal. “When you live with children, you realize things you thought were forgotten.”
Ceña focuses on play to highlight the contrast between the innocence of youth and what he describes as “the decay of the world we leave behind.”
In his most recent series Paper stories, children wear masks and traverse a fictional cardboard world. The scenes are made from everyday materials and transform into fantastic realms full of animals, dinosaurs and exciting mysteries.
The psychology of costume and concealment plays a metaphorical role in Ceña’s paintings, reflecting how people conform to the actualities of adulthood and society. “We wear these masks every day and try to project an image of ourselves that in most cases does not correspond to the reality we live in,” says the artist. “This is especially reflected in our use of social media.”
Vibrant landscapes often lack depth, as if cut from paper and layered into a stage-like backdrop. These flattened scenes “suggest that these worlds are destined to dissolve, to fold in on themselves,” Ceña says, adding that “loneliness is a silent protagonist.”
The work shown here was recently on display at Gallery LeRoyerand you can discover more of Ceña’s work Instagram.
