The Molesworth Gallery is delighted to present Light Catchers, an exhibition of new paintings by Oscar Fouz Lopez.
The work of Oscar Fouz Lopez is informed by mythological stories and their synthesis of history, metaphor and philosophical teachings.
His latest paintings feature a cast of characters, the Light Catchers, absorbed in their own thoughts, travelling through surreal landscapes, engaged in activities at once mundane and metaphysical.
He posits the idea of a group of people living and thriving in a campsite at the heart of a forest. In doing so, he’s not reaching for a utopian idyll, but rather for a way of living that’s achievable, as well as being desirable. His subjects live together in nature, enjoying the simple pleasures of dancing and telling stories. His purpose is deliberately reductive - to strip life back to a pure, uncomplicated, and joyful essence. By accentuating the positive in our collective psyche and presenting goodness as the strongest driving force, he implicitly rejects the allegory for human nature William Golding constructs in The Lord of the Flies.
The settings for the paintings are inspired by a trip the artist took to the redwood forests of California, where he walked and sketched among some of the oldest trees on Earth. On the same trip, the artist also visited the De Young Museum in San Francisco and discovered the textiles of the Navajo tribe. He was struck by the vibrancy and colours of their woven blankets and rugs. The sacred art of weaving is engrained in Navajo culture, in the believe that the universe was woven together by the Spider Mother. The artist was inspired by the alignment of the tribe’s daily lives with their holistic concept of the universe, in which doing and being are one and the same. His work is a homage to this truthfulness, merging the real with the imaginary and allowing for new realities to open up and invite the viewer to enter. In doing so, he offers us an entrée into the world of the Light Catchers, who dwell in luxuriant nature.
Oscar Fouz Lopez is a Spanish-born artist who lives and works in Dublin. Previous solo shows include Don’t look back, baby at the Molesworth in 2020 and Pickled Chimp Ears at Pallas Projects in 2018. His work has featured in group exhibitions such as Winter Open (2016) in Rua Red, Dublin, Insider Art (2016) in MCE, Belfast, and Everything is in Everything, (2019) in the Sirius Arts Centre, Cobh. He was also selected for the RHA Annual Exhibition in each of the past five years. He graduated with a BA in Fine Art from DIT in 2010 and was shortlisted for the Most Promising Graduate Award at the Talbot Gallery the same year. Lopez holds an MFA in painting from NCAD (2016) and was the Tony O'Malley artist in residence for 2018/19. He won the St Patrick’s University Hospital Favourite Painting Prize in 2020. His work is held in public and private collections, including those of the OPW and Trinity College, Dublin.
