Botanicum Series II – John Pastoriza Pinol Solo Exhibition

John Pastoriza-Pinol works articulate a delicate balance between natural history and contemporary art practice, it is a commitment to painting as both a method and as a form of deeper inspection.

The Botanicum Series was a project undertaken following the success of Pastoriza-Piñol’s first solo exhibition in London 2006. This series of exhibitions would syncopate a lengthy art career and allow the artist to return to the genesis of his art practice with renewed skill and vision. Unlike the treatise offered to a Florilegium, a collection of plants from a particular garden or place site, the Botanicum Series is typically a collection of intimate studies of plants and natural history with a more contemporary art feel. These would be subjects the artist has an affinity towards or which have captured his attention.

This new body of work reveals a noticeably conscious shift by Pastoriza-Piñol with the composition of the flower/ plant portraits. The meticulous rendering, coupled with the acrobatics of the subject matter, presents a maturation in skill and accentuates the tension between the beauty and perfection of the specimens depicted and their symbolism.

Pastoriza-Piñol endeavours to recrudesce similar subjects depicted in his first series. This is a recapitulation of with more complex studies that pursue a subversive narrative with floating objects, lack of shadows and his use of negative space. This hyper-representation of the natural world with its Cerulean blues, Perylene Greens, Vanadium Yellows and Quinacridone Reds, creates a new contemporary reality.

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