Under the title “Metal paintings” the Miguel Marcos gallery opens the individual exhibition of Carlos Franco, who intends to make a brief reading of the last years of production of one of the initiators of the New Madrid Figuration and present the work Recent on the sheet metal.
The figure of Carlos Franco (Madrid, 1951) strongly bursts into the Spanish art scene, showing a painting of great personality and a drawing that projects the vital force to the entire work. Work that from its beginning has been guided by ideals that have evolved over the years, but to which the artist has always been faithful.
It is a dedalic painting, excessive, in which there is a huge number of planes and in which the central integrative perspective of the set is challenged, ideally passable for the viewer. To abound in the interpretative difficulty of his works, one aspect of his figures is decisive. These are not built, as usual, through a profile that rigorously determines the shape of things. The silhouettes of each of them, as well as the space in which they are presented, have sharp and still powerful contours.
At the end of the nineties a facet of material experimentation can be mastered in the great production of Carlos Franco. In 1996 the artist for the first time used aluminum as a support in his work. He is fascinated by the plasticity of this material that allows multiple points of view and reading of the work, depending on the volumes of the painting and the light itself that makes it the protagonist. The performance of the materials on the aluminum support is another highlight. In the first works we also find acrylic, sand glued with glue, there is silicate paint that grips aluminum very well.