Pepe Hidalgo
Pepe Hidalgo was born in Spain and now resides in Vancouver. He predominantly paints with acrylic and sketches. Hidalgo studied fine arts in Utrecht, Netherlands.
Hidalgo has a distinct element present in his paintings. There is a string or cord that can be seen in the majority of his work. It acts as the umbilical cord that unites him to the universe and allows him to time travel back and forth as it supports his weight and pulls him back into reality. It also takes on the role of identity maker and can almost be considered to replace his signature.
Pepe Hidalgo Artist Statement
Standing in front of each painting one encounters a moment in time created within the world depicted on the canvas. Each of the paintings is representational, depicts, and thus constructs, a world with a unique space-time that is definitely separate from the one which the viewer primarily inhabits. What each of the depicted moments share is that they present moments of leisure or rest, moments when time slows or even stops, sometimes briefly, at others permanently. Moments in one place and then into another place. These paintings allow one to travel, to cross spaces, borders, time, dimensions, and then return.
The pieces often have an intimate personal ring to them, but they are also closely connected to mythological and mysterious distant natures, personal elements that show both the process side and the object side of the art-making experience. The scenarios in each work have their own story, their own relation to theory and history within art, within the art world and outside of it as well. This conjuring of a range of ‘pasts’ become the unifying element in the series. Objects with historical associations makeup metaphors for the great differences and dissimilar points of departure that human beings are allotted. My art invokes the ever-ineffable nature of time and the equally mysterious way that the past, in art and in the rest of life, can push its way forward into the present moment.