CHEMA COBO

Tarifa 1952

Lives and works in Málaga

Artist representative of the New Madrileña Figuration. Linked to the gallerys Buades and Siboney.

Chema Cobo questions the world in a provocative and disturbing way, and conceives the painting as a conceptual act by which thought is manifested. In his works, images are released from the dictatorship of normal representation immersing the viewer in an intermediate universe where dream and reality intertwine.

Cobo presents art as a sensory way of creating philosophy. His training in this field, and interest in the work of Nietzsche, Cioran, Adorno or San Juan de la Cruz, have influenced his way of escaping the conundrum of the shadows and get to the idea. His vision is that of an intellectual nomad, a fan of paradox, with an extremely sharp sense of humor obsessed with building intellectual constructions, between the verbal and the visual, to destroy them silently.

Obsessively heterodox, since his beginning, he has defended the role of the artist as a pretender unfolding different masks in order to erase the traces of self, explore personal and cultural identity, and question the story. His skepticism as a way of living and way of seeing, coupled with an immense capacity for synthesis has allowed him to engulf lines of thought or aesthetic keys without bias in his work.

Cobo paints to become disoriented, lost for the sake of the enigma and mystery, leading the images to the limit of simulation using seeds of uncertainty like fate and mutability. Against the excess of current information, he defends an amnesiac painting that requires time to observe. He finds in the deconstruction of language one of the possible developments of artistic practice. An ionic and cynical use of the word as a rejection of the world as it is presented.

His long artistic journey includes different periods in addressing the re-invention of painting through hybridization, dramatizing expressionisms or questioning the power of representation of the image. A personal mapping plotted on maps that highlight inter-textual sarcasm embodied by the figure of the Joker, the metaphors of memory through the iconography and poetic Strait of Gibraltar or reflections on identity, appearance or reflection.

Among the pictorial references the following painters are highlighted: Gerard Richter, J. B. Kitaj, Marcel Broodthaers, Rembrant or Velázquez.

Consulted bibliography: Villaespesa, Mar, “El pez que se muerde la cola”, Atkins, R y Watson, S., “Chema Cobo: la psique como sitio, cita, vista”, Castro Flórez, Fernando, “Rituales, mapas, laberintos, espectráculos” y “Me confundo. A la deriva de las especulaciones barrocas”, in the exhibition catalogue Chema Cobo. El laberinto de la brújula, Sevilla, CAAC, 1998. Carey-Kent, Paul, “Chema Cobo: the Jocker off-stage”, Umbría, Ana, “Last supper/last news”, in the exhibition catalogue Chema Cobo. Out of frame, Málaga, CAC, 2010.