The pictorial language of José Manuel Ciria fits within the scope of American Abstract Expressionism and the “Art Informel” movements of the 1940s and 1950s, which focused on matter and informal procedures, including tendencies such as tachisme and shapelessness, gestural or action painting and lyrical abstraction. It may also contain some reminiscences of Automatism, a technique of drawing and writing used by Freud, alongside the concept of free association, to explore the - Terra Incognita
of the Unconscious. Automatism was further exploited by surrealist artists such as Breton, Ernst, Masson or by Tapiès, Pollock, de Kooning and Borduas, among others. It was widely used as a creative process to access raw and unconventional materials, thus favouring bodily gestures and visual expressions free from the control of reason and morals.

Ciria's energetic painting on recycled plastic combines an aggressive and extroverted free expressivity with a sense of order, equilibrium and rationality, a tension infused with obvious aesthetic concerns. The contrast appears from the layered juxtaposition of the central geometric form, a perfectly designed modernist square and the wild burst of spilled and splashed paints. One can also notice the simultaneous presence of a seemingly chaotic saturation and emptiness, as a broad surface of the plastic canvas is left bare, creating an open and breathing background. The impressive large size of the work alongside the wide use of vivid oxblood reds fused with opaque grey, black and white oil paints produce a certain agitation and uneasiness among the viewers. With its vehement, explosive and volcanic-like intensity, staging some sort of primal violent act or some bewildered theatre of the mind, it seems to be willing to trigger latent, perhaps traumatic, individual or collective memories.



Katherine Sirois