"When I incorporated the fluorescent paint, it got interesting."

Alberto Lago enhances color to the maximum, in unsuspected regions that only a few daring ones choose. He is one of the artists where personal happiness is transmuted into his canvases, in the most organic and eloquent way possible. It is not a matter of sending or positioning joy for the sake of painting, because it seems easy and attractive; this would trivialize the intentions.

The creator offers a logical, understandable discourse, sometimes on the abstract, while in other works the figurative predominates. The main thing, and he always makes it clear, is the ability to let oneself be carried away by his circles, pictorial forms, paths that grow as the eye is able to open new horizons in his pieces.  

Alberto Lago is a lover of the universe, of light and invites us to dream with him. About his new virtual exhibition at Galería Máxima, we propose to know more about his thoughts and artistic career.


-When you were a university student you found your creative path. Why did you choose that kind of painting?

I don't think I chose that painting, I came to it through a process of experimentation, a process that began in the first year of ISA. Painting and drawing were mediums that I was interested in learning since the academy. After the interaction with the pictorial feeling that some of us had, the concerns, the engine of doing with art something as risky as the act of painting was in those times... the huge domes, the awareness that we were building something... my desire to paint was consummated there.

I always grouped my work by courses at ISA, and in each one you can observe visual changes, the paintings were mutating and when I incorporated fluorescent paint... things got interesting; so those were very good creative moments, super entertaining, I reached the resolution to paint without a photographic reference and I think that at that point a visuality, let's say, recognizable, was assembled.

Then I incorporated elements such as happy faces, hearts, flowers... and so a method, a way was built. My work transformed over time, although the idea was always the same, to find that space where the feeling of being disconnected with the ordinary converges, the moment where we are conscious, when the mind and body are in harmony with the whole, that feeling would be a strong motivation, to translate it into painting was and is my challenge.

-Your art is related to subjective experiences of happiness, how do you nourish yourself as a creator?

They are both personal and collective experiences. I have had strong experiences in my life related to love, I think that has been a big part of the motivations.

-Following the theme of the previous question, many artists have addressed the theme of happiness over time, who do you have as references?

My favorite artist is Vincent Van Gogh, when I approach Van Gogh's work, both his paintings and his letters, in it I discover true human essences, his love for nature and his existential search always impressed me, he was a being deeply connected with happiness.

-How real or fictitious can your pictorial landscapes be? Many of my landscapes are conceived taking as a reference real places, others not, although the result can always seem fictitious, it is a kind of vision that I propose as pictorial reality and that can also become realities if we understand or look beyond what our eyes see.

-The pieces that are currently on display at Máxima Estudio Taller, are they part of a series, and if so, how did you come to conceive that series?

The works that are in Máxima are part of the series "Espectrum", it is a series that emerged in 2018, from the idea of "Light", its decomposition in a chromatic spectrum of 7 colors arranged in a universal order, these works were painted following that pattern of synergies, they are dynamic paintings that represent states of hidden matters, in constant processes of transformation and perfection.

-Your works dialogue between figurative and abstract, how would you define them?

Figuration or abstraction is a dilemma that I do not follow today, each painting has something figurative and abstract at the same time, it is that in-between where magic happens, I do not know how to define it.

-The presence of intense colors, fluorescent, represents a constant in your work, why bet on this visual resource, what does it allow you and what is special about it?

Fluorescent paint is a captivating pigment, it is almost always transparent, the idea of painting with this type of material came when I was walking down a corridor of the Plastic Arts faculty at the University, it was a light bulb that turned on... I remember at the beginning experimenting with some old inks that a classmate gave me and I ended up disappointed. It was a completely new material.

Later I was able to buy fluo acrylic and I liked the intensity of that paint, the spontaneity, the expressive possibilities of water as a diluent, it was the beginning of an unknown world, if we take into account that my academic training was fundamentally in oil.

I spent the next 11 years painting with fluorescent acrylic; along the way I also discovered that this material reacts with ultraviolet light.

From the beginning I associated the intense colors in art with psychedelic painting and the visual tradition that developed in the 60's and 70's and, somehow, I was influenced by this thought, all the ideas of the expansion of consciousness, the search for freedom, love as a banner.

All that artistic movement seduced me and I always thought of my work as a new expression of all this culture. In 2018 I started working fluorescent oil painting and then a new window opened in my work. The denser, more traditional oil paint is an infinite pigment and allows me to experiment and explore with incredible results.

-In 2019 you were the official Latin Grammy artist, do you feel you have more engagement with the public now that your career has gained more visibility?

I don't think the Grammy event has engaged me more than usual with the public, although it is true that my career has received a boost thanks to that.

-At some point do you plan to experiment other paths in art?

I haven't thought about it, I feel quite defined as a painter.

-How has the current pandemic influenced your creative production?

I think the pandemic is a phenomenon that will have social and philosophical consequences in the world, those consequences have only reaffirmed my position towards art and I think that, somehow, now more than ever humanity needs beauty, love, happiness.

-Who is Alberto Lago for Cuban and universal art?

Alberto Lago could be many things... it's difficult to create an alien idea about who I am, but I like to think that both for Cuban and universal art I've been a kind of Outsider, a painter who followed his own path, who faced challenges... an explorer who paints, a painter who explores.


15/9/2020