Germán Valles Fernández’s intricate paintings utilize the human body to synthesize a plethora of information. Working in predominantly oil on large-scale canvases with an overall earthy palette, the artist’s style is at once highly textured and versatile; whereas some works border on haunting abstraction, others are rendered with pristine clarity and are often rife with nearly classical symbolism. The artist explains: “Sometimes I do not use brushes and go directly to the canvas, without any preliminary sketches…My favorite trend is expressionism, which I then mix with mythology and politics, always using the human body as a channel of communication.”
In works such as The Medusa (2016), a woman lounges lazily upon a bed of serpents. As the snakes below her writhe and twist in a never-ending cacophony of curved movement, our Medusa gazes lackadaisically towards a focal point beyond the borders of the canvas. In this work, Fernández employs an all-over textural composition as well as an earthy palette of muted brown, cream, and green. The artist currently resides in Mexico.
