La Mirada, translated The Gaze, by Luis-González Palma embodies critical aspects and enduring themes of the Latin American artist’s work. González-Palma is best celebrated for his work as a photographer; more truly stated he is a contemporary artist whose artistic practice contemplates existence. This artwork, included in our Time in Two Directions | 10 Year | 10 Year Anniversary Show, employs the contemporary artist’s characteristic techniques and materials and anchors to enduring concerns. La Mirada is a photo collage composed of a hand painted silver print stitched with red thread to original documents overlaid by a print in kodalith. In the silver print, a portrait to the right, González Palma uses the same “hand painted” technique used in his most sought after early works, like La Lotería or La Luna. In such works a stain-like wash is applied directly to a silver print in fiber paper, famously leaving the eyes or other small aspects a gleaming white, un-touched by this “paint.” González Palma’s subjects stare back at us with a criticality so direct presence is evoked. The eyes haunt our gaze- they are both inviting and witnessing.
In the photo collage by Luis González Palma the infinite is invoked; the use of double exposure to print a much larger eye behind the young woman featured in the portrait paired with the viewer’s own (outside the frame) creates layers of contentiousness and omnipresence and underscores an awareness of self and other(s). This sentiment is further supported by the use of original documents- pages torn from Luz de la senda de la virtud | (Light of the path of virtue) that help compose the left side of La Mirada.
With more recent work (2013 - present) the Artist has brought digital photography, video, and sound into his practice. His art work remains a study on the nature of humanity’s existential existence, but the locus has expanded and become quite theoretical. In more recent artworks Luis González Palma has discontinued making his own new photographs and instead has chosen to work with archives and direct methods of translation to turn the phenomenological world into a visual or audible artwork that seeks to understand the larger scope of “the gaze.”
Luis González Palma
La Mirada (from Volver a Pasar por el Corazón), 2002
hand painted silver gelatin print, original documents, kodalith, red thread
Edition of 15 | 19.5 x 39 in. | $6,500