GABRIEL O'SHEA'S HUMAN AND REALISTIC TECHNOLOGICAL FUTURE
Gabriel O'Shea (Metepec, Mexico, 1998) manages to delve into that huge and apparent dichotomy between the technological and the human (or the future and the real) in his most recent proposal at Hilario Galguera's Madrid headquarters, a series of paintings of high conceptual content that critically debate on several technical and thinking aspects.
In a world in which technologies seem to have acquired a new epitome with the development of artificial intelligence, reality seems, for the time being, to be able to partially dismantle that discourse. For the Mexican artist, starting precisely from the possibilities and limitations of automatic learning is a declaration of intentions to point out the human-like inaccuracies that lie in these early stages of technological development.
Even in the most formal aspect, the expression in the supposed archaism of painting as a technique used, and more in its realistic aspect where he pays homage to his admired Antonio Lopez, is another evident point of the contrast between reality and discourse that O'Shea intends to highlight. In Obertura he builds an exploratory framework composed of works that allude to a humanity that looks desperately to a transhumanism that seems much more unreal than what contemporary narrative shows.
Spread across canvases and boards, the Mexican artist's paintings are based on images processed by himself from technology and depict, in that second life, human beings who are precisely engaged in that dynamic, but who, from their bodies, imperfection or psychology, seem to be trapped in a much less fictitious reality than the visual narrative would have us believe. There are also the details of the human after technological learning, the same ones that indicate that the improvement of artificial intelligence is still far away and that certifies its imperfection in a too natural corporeality.
The natural, the mental, everything that the human being gives off. And with it, their attitudes and social reactions to religion and taboos, spirituality or sadomasochism. The whole process and choice made by O'Shea revolves around the idea of confrontation, from the application of the organic aspect of leather in a couple of his paintings, which alludes to that double function of a reminder of the natural and a material that distorts sharpness, to the use of painting, photographic recreation or the exploration of the limits of artistic practice.
Obertura could, therefore, be a double-edged sword in its interpretation. It also leads us to become certain of the unstable and fragile nature of humanity in the face of its future, created by himself, but of unquestionable technological relay, but also to be aware of a present that is much more human in its responsibility than any narrative of a future —that has blurred its limits— could hide.
Obertura. Gabriel O'Shea can be visited until February 21 at the Hilario Galguera Gallery, Doctor Fourquet, 12, Madrid (Spain).
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