Eduardo Portillo

Galerías y otras organizaciones que le representan

Galerie Richard

Descripción del Artista

Eduardo Portillo was born in El Congo, El Salvador in 1986, and currently lives and works in Houston, Texas. Eduardo E. Portillo obtained a B.F.Q at the University of Houston, TX in 2011. He participated in solo and group exhibitions in art galleries in Houston, Dallas, Denver, San Antonio and in museum exhibitions in the Blaffer Art Museum in Houston. His exhibitions have been reviewed in BlouinArtInfo, Art Ltd, West, 1 /1 Mag, Entropy Mag, The Know, The Denver Post to cite a few. Portillo’s paintings relate as much the literal edges than the surface of the pictural plane, realizing his personal desire to deviate from the rectilinear into real space. From his beginnings, he has been developing a specific aesthetics based on protrusions, “dents of resistance” which point out in unexpected parts of the canvas as if the material itself had the last word. His work is also about light, space, and color. Technically his works are shaped canvases, paintings on the walls or on the floor. Usually, the aesthetics of shaped canvases is associated with smooth sensual curves (Gorchov, Matsutani, Imai…) or with geometrical patterns (Frank Stella, Enrico Castellani…). Eduardo Portillo’s canvases are not smooth but sharp, and the composition is unpredictable, surprising, playful and nevertheless perfectly balanced. On the work titled Eta Carinae DS100 the three dents on the works on the surface perfectly combine with the three points of the triangular canvas. The artist also makes great decisions in his selection of colors depending on the canvas shape and their position on the front or on the sides. As his work is three dimensional, it implies shadows and reflections and the artist plays with them. The standing work titled B-15z seems to have received a sun and colored ray just on his sides. In Kepler- 22b, the artist highlights the contrast between the subtle color gradation and the sharp construction. He expands the soft orange light at the center to the irregular edges. Up to now reviews about Eduardo Portillo’s works refer to topographical landscapes. There is some truth in it as the artist not only makes some drawings but also takes photographic shots of nature and urban landscapes to develop his visual vocabulary. As the dots of composition and specific colors are located on the borders and as now he develops works with several panels such as The Last Gasherbrum, the topographical interpretation has been sometimes extended to the thematic of a frontier, as borders of political entities. Effectively the artist’s life faced the experience of them. Another interpretation is to consider each piece as a stone that the artist intended to sculpt and tried to. However, the inner structure of the stone resists to the artist’s will and Jean-Luc Richard called these protrusions “dents of resistance”. The artist seems to recognize the weakness and the strength of the material and plays with them instead of confronting them. One step further could be to refer the borders and space between each painted element as a visual representation of concept “Entre-Deux” (in-between) created by psychoanalyst and philosopher Daniel Sibony. The in-between is an incompressible distance between two humans, however close they are in life. Eduardo Portillo’s shape canvas brings a new visual aesthetics in the art history of painting. Their three-dimensional aspect and their abstract vocabulary are open to multiple interpretations which combine and enrich his works.

Exposiciones en las que ha participado como artista

Espacio Extendido

Colectiva

Slanted + Over-Lit

Individual

Azul Índigo

Colectiva

3 exposiciones