Portales y Desgastes (Portals and Decay)
Embajada, San Juan, 2023
This series explores the almost nauseating fragility of memory. Each painting, a facsimile of an old, degraded photograph found in family archives. Every wear and tear blown up by the artist’s careful —yet affecting— technique.
Nightmarishly, Pabón Velázquez surpasses the camera through his paintings. The camera introduced itself with the promise of immortalizing our fleeing existence, but his paintings immortalize its failure to do so.
Text by Cleo León Ricart
El Manglar, c. 1955
Oil and beeswax on canvas
48” x 69”
Bailable, Bayamón, c. 1962
Oil, metallic pigment and beeswax on canvas
48” x 60”
Los queremos mucho, Cabo Rojo, c. 1978
Oil and beeswax on canvas
30” x 40”
Bautismo, c. 1983
Oil and beeswax on canvas
36” x 36”
Procesión, Rio Piedras, c. 1960
Oil, metallic pigment and beeswax on canvas
22” x 20”
Photos: Raquel Pérez Puig