MALAGA.- The CAC Malaga is presenting The Snow Is Dancing, the first solo show at a museum by the Málaga artist José Luis Puche. It comprises 29 small and large-format works produced in the last four years, most of them never before exhibited in public.
José Luis Puche (Málaga, 1976) has a PhD in art history. His career as an artist took off in 2005 when he held his first solo show in his home city. By 2008, just three years later, he was able to break into the international scene. Drawing is the pivot around which his work revolves, and he evidences a truly astonishing technical skill in this respect, considering that he is self-taught but perhaps also because of his uninhibited approach. As a draughtsman, his learning is the slow result of a fierce determination from early childhood, and both his technical knowledge and stylistic evolution owe everything to the selective voracity of his gaze and the insistent exercise of the trained hand.
In his mimetic drawings he uses the colours demanded by the drawing itself, sometimes just black and white, sometimes very colourful tones that catch the spectator's eye.
The alleged emotional indifference of the colour grey is offset in his work by a very physical touch of the pencil that turns the drawing into a passionate corporal dance. Equally patent is the artist's natural tendency to experiment with materials up to the point, for example, of using oil charcoal to achieve a watercolour effect.
His inclination to represent reality as fiction is plainly obvious. The exploration of reality that Puche practises ultimately elevates the value of the apparent to the status of real. His works distinctly evoke uncertainty, generating a sense of disquiet.
During his career, Puche has exhibited at prestigious venues like the Sydney Opera House, where he was the only European artist invited to take part in the group show 9 Hours Underground, and at fairs like the YIA Art Fair (Paris) and Basel Scope Art Show (Switzerland). He has also won several prizes and distinctions, including the International Emerging Artists Award (Dubai).