For the second installation of the One-to-One series, Galería ATC presents selected works by two artists, Ofir Dor (Israel) and Juan José Valencia (Tenerife). One-to-One #2 presents two paintings that reflect the interest of both artists on the subject of food and nutrition.
The shadowy figures seated at the table in Ofir Dor's Meal (2017, oil on paper) seem to occupy a negative space compared to the standing figures who serve them, whose combinations of forms, filled with hints of pink and red, enliven the scene. Compositionally, Meal is reminiscent of Van Gogh's Potato Eaters, but Dor's gestural brushstrokes lend some ambiguity to the elements of the scene, and we are not sure what is being depicted.
In his still life with food (Untitled, 2019, oil on canvas), Juan José Valencia also blurs the details, opting instead to work more extensively with blocks of color to construct the abundant plate. The application of paint in thick layers emphasizes the artist's gestural approach to the study of an everyday necessity, transforming it once again into something tactile. Although ambiguous foods clutter the table, there is something comforting and nourishing about its display.
There is humility and grandeur in eating: we do it to survive and to celebrate. Food, whether elaborately prepared, a diet or a fast, can be an expression of cultural or religious rituals that create and distinguish a community; it is also an indicator of our capacity, as a species, to consume for pure pleasure, or to fill ourselves excessively (sometimes, to the point of harming ourselves). And like food, the act of painting is inextricably connected to the production of our bodies, both in the form of energy and waste.
