Ángel Aragonés

ÁNGEL ARAGONÉS: ZEN AND ALCHEMY

The circle symbolizes enlightenment and human perfection for Zen practitioners; it represents the wholeness of the self. Ángel Aragonés quickly brushes this allegorical emblem onto the fibrous cotton paper which sops up the rich oils and begins to convert the philosopher’s stone into gold. The “magic arc” of the cranium is immediately represented, its contents are made present, visible, before us. The artist’s display in this group show is a homage to representational memory, memory as images which live beyond our spatio-temporal existence, images which dwell within, and within which we dwell. Ángel Aragonés calls himself a lover of utopia. The inner self that he reveals in these paintings is precisely that utopia, that no place which makes us who we want to be.

What has ohanged is the language. Ángel Aragonés paints memory knowledge as symbolio bits of information which are stored in that transcendent reaiity that is the human psyche. The figures stand in the dark dressing room of the mmd awaiting their cali onto the lighted stage of cogitation. These figurative players will act circuitously, transforming mechanical stage cues into the representative spectacle, memory. Ángel Aragonés passes through Mumon's gateiess gafe and enters into a utopia, the magic aro or the egghead, where he dis-covers his self as the true expression of this phenomenon we cali memory. The artist has colleoted his mercurial existenoe in order fo recollect a more sulfuric being. ln this show, Ángel Aragonés remembers a Zen alchemist whose mother tongue is cybernetios.

Vincent Martin