Life in Shade

For thousands of years, we are used to take comfort in another’s presence. We live to be with people, and we die accompanied by people. All of a sudden, it halted when an unprecedented pandemic imposed a brutal social distancing that meant a full stop of physical human interaction. With one third of some 2.6 billion people around the world placed in humanity’s biggest psychological experiment, the toll of the quarantine has created invisible wounds of trauma and shock. And to avoid the risk of infection, of getting sick, and of losing a loved one, we gave in to the imposed invitation to enter and live in a world shrunk down to the size of a window.

For artist Kiko Urquiola, the current crisis of humanity taught us to be alone. More than a gift, the need to be safe and saved only validated that solitude is a skill of survival. For the past eight months and counting, we were forced to sit down with ourselves to do the fearsome process of getting to know ourselves. Every day, we are forced with no choice but to welcome personal emotions and uncomfortable introspection we used to forget or avoid in our once busy lives being with people.

In the continuing months of being swallowed whole in contemplation, to succeed at solitary confinement requires us to accept that we are being thrown upon ourselves; that being adept at being alone imposes the need to confront our reality rather than opting for any distraction. In this growing battle between reason and emotion, Urquiola notices the shift of vibrancy to shades of gray, not necessarily black-and-white clear, as everyone enters their inner workings of their soul’s world.

For Urquiola, even before the lockdown, there is always a need to be alone and that, there is beauty and wisdom in those stolen moments. It is a cozy place that allows you to be free, to be self-centered, or to be selfish, without the gazes and opinions of people to worry about. It is a place where the self no longer seeks people for their approval and attention and the need for others to scaffold one’s sense of identity is abandoned. In this opportune place and time, when judgements and preferences of others no longer significantly matter, we are left to perform the shaping of our self-concept and the construction of our own identity. And as the highly layered identity slowly breaks down, which is more of a gift than a tragedy, the false self falls away and leaves you naked to know and settle with your true and authentic self. As this isolation peels off the overstimulating culture and heals us from unnecessary social standards and expectations, it slowly heals us and helps us reconnect better with ourselves. As the time passes by, we become unconscious that we have grown thorns and barbed wires around us to unwelcome people who may judge and hurt us.

In his fourth solo exhibition, Urquiola reviews the world of being alone that most artists are familiar with and live in. From monochromatic to sepia, he paints images of lone individuals in personal spaces unperturbed by hallowed and dark gazes from the windows. More than a counterpoint of optimism, his visual tableaux are paradoxes of inequality caused by urbanization and increasing economic disparities that led most people to pre-lockdown isolation. Consistently haunting and enduring, his brand of melancholy invites the spectator to be in the spaces he paints and allows them to settle in them based on their beliefs, speculations, or simply the need to examine one’s life. Sincerely interested to creatively explore the fundamental questions about identity and interpersonal relations, each portrait is a powerful display of illusions that captivate depictions of reality enhanced with a personal layer of vision. And through the years, his level of accuracy and emotional depth heighten and deliver tangible solidity and undeniable presence that can fill a room with exhilaration, enchantment, and introspection.

In his young, creative journey, Urquiola validates that when we are confronted with ourselves, we find that we are more equipped, capable, and strong enough than we realize, in facing our own truths and selves alone. In these shades, he recognizes that one cannot be bent or swayed to either end of the spectrum. And as we hope to gradually go back to being with people once again, he hopes to remind us of the best things that happened when we were alone living Life in Shade.