REFLECTIONS ON TRADITION

by Dr. Carol Damian

There is an undoubtedly baroque aesthetic that appears in the complex imagery created by Alejandro Mazón. Unusual combinations of drawings, painting, vintage papers and collage elements are retrieved from his “ photographic memory” of Art History and other historical and decorative sources and integrated as inventive new artistic compositions. Each work provokes the viewer to attempt a narrative subset and it's absence results in a fantasy that is the artist own to explain. There is also a surreal element to his work, in the matter in which certain forms are associated and neglected given new significance. His juxtaposition of cultural references, past and present, plays against, and compliments, a unique technique of skilled painting and careful attention to design.

Intentionally denying the myth of artistic originality with his recognizable appropriations and borrowings, Mazón uses the collaging of images and writings to address the paradox of the missing artist — gone many years whose presence never the less remains immanent through out his/her work — reinterpreted through the work of another artist, himself. Thus Mazón cleverly links several layers of signification in to his personal palimpsests. Even his papers (vintage, hand made, texts, wall-papers, etc ), and mixed-media applications contribute to such references as those of manuscripts of parchment and papyrus written upon over and over, or objects that become symbols to subtly reflect their history. In Alejandro Mazón's work, similar relationships and assimilations occur as the viewer identifies particular images and attempts to place them in context — new and old, serious and humorous, fine and decorative. The artist establishes a balance and a tension between such relationships that are far more plastic and painterly than the more choice of images and their placement on unusual backgrounds.

Much of Alejandro Mazón’s work engages in realms of fantasy and the imagination as he draws and paints his own particular and personal additions upon his precisely arranged compositions. It is his own baroque sentiment that involve numerous points of reference and inform his selection and their interaction as critical elements in creating a painting. The simple message of religiosity, for example that is basic to the mission if a traditional baroque artist, is often complicated by a wealth of symbols. Alejandro Mazón is a modern artist with similar sensitivities. His symbolism operates on numerous levels, from the personal to the iconic, and it is never obvious. Instead, he allows the viewer to respond and complete the picture, as he uses his own technical proficiency to guide the eyes in order to solve his clever puzzles.