Leonor Ruiz Dubrovin (ES)
In Dubrovin’s oil on canvas, she often designs thick layers of paint, applying it roughly with a spatula and blending it to appear slightly blurred. This textured use of material adds a tactile and multi-sensory component to her works, which Dubrovin subsequently expanded in her three-dimensional works.
At first sight, her pieces seem to span over subjects and themes. However, there are some shared visual motifs that tend to regularly re-emerge and that shine a light on a thematic fil-rouge. For example, the presence of anonymized figures characterizes many of Dubrovin’s paintings, showing her interest in capturing identities and reflecting upon authenticity and fragmented realities.
In Machination this effect is created by portraying a figure facing away from the viewer. This arouses the audience’s curiosity while leaving space for independent thinking to find interpretation and explore personal emotions. In Soirée the same effect is created by smudging the painting over one side of the canvas. Only a pair of standing legs and some balloons are clearly outlined.
Leonor Ruiz Dubrovin
The use of smudged painting is a recurring technique for Dubrovin, which shows her interest towards combining both figurative and abstract elements. The union of these two worlds is meant to prompt the viewer to make free associations when confronted by her works.
Both these paintings were created as part of the exhibition Soirée which reflected upon fragmentary stories linked with events and sensations experienced at parties. Therefore, the smudged, blurred paintings represent a fragmented reality which emerges from partial stories hard to recall clearly. Some sections of these stories are completely absent- wiped off by smudged painting- some narratives are the incoherent combination of different fragments visually represented in Dubrovin’s paintings.
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