IRENE GONZÁLEZ

Málaga, Spain, 1988

Irene González works and lives in Madrid. “My creative process starts with collecting all sorts of found images that are later on altered to create a collage composed by the different parts, that finds halfway my original sketch and idea. That ever-growing archive of images is the material that allows me to discuss themes like memory and projection, and I use the fragments as quotes to speak about the personal from the external.
From that creative process I think my work conveys a certain strangeness: it’s very realistic but they are images of a reality that doesn’t exist, they depict figures that are not real, as they were made using fragments from different images.
Time and memory always play a key role. My 2018 project Toujours déjà, was a way of approaching a feeling I want to create in every drawing: a moment suspended in time. I aim to create compositions or settings that generate powerful and silent poetic images that balance on the edge of recognition and strangeness.
The conceptual part is always important for me. I’m not interested in doing photographic images that just depict reality. The concept and investigation behind the work make it go far beyond the aesthetic and deepens into thought. An ideal goal for me could be, as Vija Celmins said, a mix between exceptional craftsmanship and conceptual sophistication. Today I find myself in a search for different ways of visual narratives and image association, playing with repetition, intuition and fragmented images.”