Carmen Pastrana

Ensimismados #23, 2022

Oil on canvas

38 x 55 cm

about Carmen Pastrana

Madrid, 1967

Carmen Pastrana graduated in Fine Arts from the Complutense University of Madrid in 1994, with a scholarship in Segovia. In 1999 she moved to New York for a period of eight years, making several exhibitions in that city, among which include her solo exhibitions at Fish Tank Gallery, Penalver Studio and White Box Gallery. In 2007 he received a grant from NYArts to work in his studios in Beijing. At the end of his stay in China he returns to Madrid where he works in his studio at the Art Center El Jacalito. In Spain he has held numerous exhibitions, including solo exhibitions Fear (Bilkin Gallery, Bilbao), Siono (Sala El Brocense, Cáceres), La invasión de los dragones (La Casa Rosa Gallery, Malaga), Nicethingtosay (BAT Alberto Cornejo Gallery, Madrid), Sin Darnos Cuenta (MA Contemporary Art Gallery, Palma de Mallorca) or the last one, held at the METRO Gallery in Santiago de Compostela. In 2013 he participated in the Biennial of Southern Panama, making a mural of 20×8 meters in the Cathedral Square of that city. Throughout her career she has been awarded in several national painting competitions, among which the Casimiro Sáinz , the Certamen de Artes Plásticas El Brocense, El Salón de Otoño de Madrid, La Fundación Amigos de Madrid, La Fundación Antonio Camuñas.Y has been a finalist in numerous of them. He has participated with different galleries in Art Fairs such as Arco, Artmadrid, Estampa, Justmadrid and Reddot Art Fair (Miami) His work is present in both private and institutional collections, among these are the Diputación de Cáceres, The David Dawes Nee Foundation, the Antonio Camuñas Foundation, the Friends of Madrid Foundation, the El Corte Inglés Collection, the Air Force, the City Council of León, the City Council of Reinosa, the City Council of Chinchón, the City Council of Colmenar Viejo, the City Council of Castillo de San Fernando and the City Council of Elda.

about the artist's works

The Platonic space of the pure idea serves Carmen Pastrana as a powerful framework to achieve effects of a refined and artificial compositional subtlety, that is clear, but it is also presented as a projection screen of suggestions or indeterminate contexts that the viewer will have to build itself.

Oscar Alonso Molina

Carmen Pastrana's work moves between painting and drawing. It usually uses a neutral and unreal background that acts as an insulator. In most cases, white is the colour you use for backgrounds. Aseptically deposit the different elements and check how, by cancelling the background noise, they are redefined. These compositional amalgams produce paradoxical encounters that frequently function as aggression to the possible. Somehow, these are visual metaphors open to reinterpretation and seek to establish connections between the real and the fictional, without lacking humour, illusion and fantasy.