Bruno Pacheco's work questions the representational and mimetic possibilities of painting, often taking art history itself as a reference. Interested in the artistic object and the various systems of pictorial translation of an image, the artist makes use of multiple sources (personal photographs, images collected on the internet or in books), in a painstaking process of referencing, approximation and variation that often results in the repetition of the same motif throughout a series of works. The repetitive act and the recurrence of themes often result in the production of countless similar compositions, with subtle variations, highlighting the illusory, artificial and abstract nature of the painting.

This work was made during a period in which characters often appeared manipulating large painted canvases, as if they were transporting, moving or fixing them in a new place. Here, the painting - El dos de mayo de 1808 en Madrid
(or - La lucha con los mamelucos
) by Francisco Goya is recognisable, evoking an episode in the Spanish resistance against Napoleonic occupation. The two figures in the foreground, crouched on their backs and absorbed in their activity, appear in other paintings on the same theme. Concentrating on something that the viewer cannot fully decipher, ignoring it and deliberately rejecting it from the action, their aloof attitude contrasts with the dynamism of the historical scene, eventually attracting the eye and becoming the focus of attention in the composition. The monochrome scheme with few contrasts and the soft plays of light contribute to a certain neutralisation of the relationship between the figures and the background and to the destabilisation of the perspective, placing the figurative quality and the abstract potential of the composition in tension.

Bruno Pacheco summons in the viewer sensations of recognition and strangeness, of attraction and exclusion, by exploring in a very particular way the associative and dissociative characteristics of (his) painting and by highlighting, in his themes and formal solutions, his understanding of this discipline as an open field.