Manuel Larralde

Buenos Aires-born, London-based artist Manuel Larralde makes images that waver between representation and abstraction, defying conventional definitions of the two. In the oil painting Blue (2014), a room rendered in a monochromatic indigo palette dissolves into pure form. “These interior scenes represent a timeless universe, everything is suspended, as to begin or end,” the artist has said. “Sometimes those objects and interiors came from my past, my childhood, and sometimes I find these scenes in my present, and they immediately remind of my past, like Proust’s Madeleine.” This connection to Larralde’s past is visceral and made material through texture and gesture; the aura of history glows from the painted surface.