RELATOS DE COTIDIANIDAD

Individual mythology is forged as a personal symbol and arises when the associative and creative union of certain complexes or external perceptual objects in any sensory domain is so intense that an image or experience triggers a whole range of concomitances (Marchán Fiz, 1972).

This excerpt from art theorist Simón Marchán Fiz allows us to cross a boundary, not necessarily a physical one, to immerse ourselves in the creative, and also vital, universe of Manu García (Oviedo, 1994).

Two paintings and a small forest of sculptures are an extract of his work, a body of work rooted in the transversal application of the verb to play. My work comes from the gut, he explains. It is a very visceral work. From the inside out. Playing as an intentional creative act. The artist confronts the pictorial and sculptural tabula rasa until transforming them into peculiar narratives of everyday life.

Playing to define a personal language. A mixture of elements, symbols, techniques, and textures bursts onto the canvas and ceramic surfaces. They accumulate in a sort of controlled chaos that disregards any hierarchical order. Glimpses of figuration, abstraction, surrealism, and comic art—some with a more narrative character, others with a metaphorical bent—create an iconographic miscellany made up of floating faces that draw from Baroque painting, references to artists like George Baselitz with the image of the house, Joan Miró with his more organic drawings, or Squeak the Mouse, the black humor comic by Massimo Mattioli. These elements, which he includes repeatedly in his works, along with other signs and instantaneous experiences, are nothing more than the deliberate and casual coincidences that govern his individual mythology.

Playing to decode ourselves. This play, which guides his painting and sculpture, is bidirectional as it overflows the medium of the works, invading the space and activating in the viewer a sort of psychoanalytic therapy in an attempt to decipher the artist’s musings and, why not, imagine what our own might look like if we were to represent them tangibly.