It has always seemed to me that Aliosky Garcia is one of those unhappy artists with their time, with the endless obsession with finding innovative ways in the possibilities offered to them by the means or manifestations they practice when, as it has been already said: “there is nothing hidden between heaven and earth “. What for some is not a major problem, as they commonly use the so called cutting edge technologies to raise their production and thus keep pace, in his case it becomes complex given the sustained used of an ancient art as engraving, and within this his commitment to continue working the xylography in the most orthodox way. In other words, he usually takes the best from the wood betting for achieving an extremely contemporary discourse without disdaining the tradition, conceptual concern that since the 1990s was already attracting the interest of engravers. His most recent exhibition entitled Tabla rasa, exhibited at UNEAC´s Martinez Villena Hall attests the above.
Now, unlike in other series where the human figure is characterized as the core of his poetic, the selection that makes up this exhibition calls for an animal presence. What is significant here is that these animals were not chosen at random but precisely because they provide an indispensable power source (pigs, chickens, fish and cows), with which human action is also implicit in each work. So the question is to ask how he gets the prized meat through the known familiar shopping basket, or appealing to the compulsive need to acquire it by the “left”. Hence the repetitive plays he sets in various printed sets as the one showed on the cover of the ration card and the image of the cow in full visual contrast under the name of divine punishment. Pork representation related to any sharp element, as it may seem very illogical, allowing its sacrifice on Eve festivities. Or the goose that laid the golden eggs that spell in golden and capital letters the word REVOLUTION!
But the relationship between individual and animal is not only marked by the fact consumption / consumer. Rebaño, work resolved in circular shapes with the repeated image of bovine animals alludes without halftones, all in red and black, to the march without the slightest protest from the masses against the mandate of a single voice / head which runs them.
Finally, La bandada infinita is an essential piece of the sample due to all the connotations it carries. A shoal of defined shapes of small fishes that in turn make up a major figure that follow (or perhaps pursue) another fish ahead. We never know for sure whether it will be to integrate the ranks or because precisely this is the leader which leads at will the voluptuous school. They carry all the weight that universal history confers, from prehistory, the medieval period to modern times. In most of the cases they are known referents such as Stoneage, the Capitoline she-wolf with the twins Romulus and Remus, the Venus of Willendorf, the Discus Thrower by Myron, the Roman Coliseum, Eiffel Tower, among many other icons, which makes us think inevitably in the rapid evolution of man along the race for humanity.
Thus Aliosky, always seized his lifeline, weaves a coherent speech intermingling the intrinsic and the collective nature, the national and the cosmopolitan, while making his xylography which, moreover, keep the marks that cuts left in the wood after so much chopped meat, as signs of life or a life that was and returns at present.
Photos: Alain Cabrera
