El peleonero 1995

Julio Galan made this painting, "El peleonero" using pastels, charcoal and collage. It’s a peculiar mix, right? The boxing cherub with the haunted look seems suspended between worlds, partly due to the flat light and soft focus of the pastels and partly because of that landscape struggling to emerge behind it. There’s something so strange about the way the paint seems to float on the surface, like a memory or a dream. I love how Galan embraces a kind of awkwardness. Look at the heavy white lines of what looks like a boxing ring that cuts right through the scene. It’s so clumsy, it has so much attitude and personality. It’s both there and not there, forcing you to do the work of seeing. That tension, between figuration and abstraction, is what makes Galan's work so compelling. It puts me in mind of how Philip Guston’s late paintings are also able to find ways to be both funny and sad at the same time.