This exibition is a part of a practiced-based research with the title: “Encouraging pareidolic effects in Visual Arts. A balancing game between abstraction and representation”, that was undertaken at the Fine Arts faculty of the UCLM University of Cuenca, Spain, from March until July 2023. Within this frame, there was explored the relation between seeing abstract forms and the subjective interpretation of them, through the creative approach of visual arts.
Starting with references on Leonardo Da Vinci, Alexander Kozens, Francis Picabia, Sigmar Polke and M’onma, and by utilizing literature related to the phenomenon of pareidolia, imagination, cryptomnesia, ontology, visual illusion and visual communication, as well as their engagement with the creative process, a series of paintings were developed. These paintings exist in a domain between abstraction and representation and are presented as a whole, in the form of an installation under the title: “Pareidolic Palimpsests”.
During the creative process each painting goes through different stages, each one of them co-exists on the canvas in transparent layers. The brain summarizes these layers and all together are creating a palimpsest. The illusory images that make their appearance, present a mental choice between two or more interpretations of the artwork. Through this interaction, while the eye receives the stimuli and the brain is trying to translate the information, there is an open space for subjective interpretation. When paintings are approached in such a way, they maintain an open space where different viewers could get different interpretations of the same image. The range of that interaction gets defined by the balancing game between abstraction and representation that takes place in the image, set against the viewer’s inner world.