The Art of Chico Molo
"When creating my work, it is important that I consider the objectives and its meaning. What's it trying to tell me? Where does it want to go? Is it coming from me, or is it created through me? Also, who, what and how does it change? The work should serve a higher purpose than my own ego."
Impressions
We look out at the world and we see a patchwork of shapes, textures and tones. Some are organic shapes, the structures of "Nature". Others are man-made shapes and forms, designed, manufactured and produced to feed the desires of our ever-growing "Cultures". My work looks at this relationship in the quest to find a balance. Within the work exist marks that represent both "Nature" and "Culture".
Mark-Making
As a printer, I am naturally drawn to marks that objects leave behind. In my work, I provide the right conditions for them to leave their marks, a metaphor for our own global carbon footprint.
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Marks of Culture
The marks of Culture are created using found, recycled materials for the textures found on their surfaces. These objects are all around us and easy to find in anything man-made.
Marks of Nature
The Marks of Nature follow nature's own path; nature will find the most efficient, energy-saving way to replicate itself through fractalising structures and patterns, utilising and adapting to changing conditions in order for organic life to evolve and exist. The Marks of nature I find by using masking tape or tissue paper, representing ourselves as we are both "Culture" and "Nature", existing inside a skin of tissue. The work is created by sharing autonomy with the process; I provide the outer perimeters for the compositions. The process provides the inner landscapes in the form of fractals.
Colour
Colours have their own life if we allow them to mix, blend and run into each other. To do this, I put away the brushes with their conventional and intentional form of application, and instead I searched for other ways to work and apply paint to the surface. Working wet is my answer, giving up the easel in favour of working on a flat surface.
Chico describes the work as an exploration of life’s yin’s and yang’s, the active and resisting forces that have created everything we can see. And fundamentally a third un-obvious neutralizing forces that acts as a bridge enabling these opposites to merge, blend and mutate into a new representation or idea. These concepts are the building foundations woven into the layers of the works surfaces from within there core. And with this concept they evolve from there previous stepping stones, as a series of interconnected stories, with several continuous threads: ‘Bling City’ is series of abstract impressionist cityscapes which absorb recycled scraps found on the street to create a vibrant and colourful, three-dimensional portrait of the city. ‘Sublime Nature’ is a series of paintings made by allowing materials to react, resist and play together before settling in to a new organic form. ‘Human Traffic’ explores the dynamic movement of groups of figures within the city’s open spaces. Chico’s exhibition ‘Nature Vs Culture’ brings together these three groups of work under a single unified idea: striking a balance between two opposing forces of nature and culture by introducing a third element that enables them to exist in, around and between each other, often undergoing a radical transformation in the process.
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