Description of project by ABC Museum
If something stands out in the work of Pablo Amargo (Oviedo, 1971) it is his ability to show the strangeness of the world. His illustrations, begun through the intimate process of pencil drawing on paper, pursue paradoxes and visual double senses endowing them with different levels of meaning, plunging the viewer into a kind of game based on observation. His ability to analyze the details and everyday situations has led him to become today one of the most prestigious and recognized national illustrators worldwide.
Its unique stroke is characterized by a formal minimalism and a high aesthetic care that, opposed to the apparent simplicity of the drawings and a reduced color palette, hide great meanings thanks to subtle details that often escape in a first contact with the pieces. Amargo's illustrations speak and express themselves without words, as visual haikus of the modern world.
In the exhibition "Pablo Amargo. Minimum spot, maximum idea ", curated by the artist himself, you can see for the first time the original illustrations of his two most recent publications, the awarded Cats are Paradoxes (Jot Down Books) and Chance (Barbara Fiore Editora).
The drawings of Cats are Paradoxes fill the ABC Museum of black cats; flexible pussycats and in a state of permanent amazement. Also they have room in them empty rooms, interiors of majestic halls, gardens, streets and swimming pools. And even views of the rooftops of Paris, Roman ruins and Venetian bridges. Riddles drawn with black ink of which each viewer must imagine a before, a present and a later.
For its part, in the series of Chance the author is committed to a type of illustration that stops giving answers to the texts with which it relates and chooses to generate new questions. Written by Pepe Monteserín with illustrations by Amargo, this book is an example of when the work of the illustrator covers all that is visible; the choice of the format -unusually vertical-, the way of distributing the texts -generating a particular reading rhythm-, the typography chosen, the inclusion of non-fiction elements -such as the collections of comets, weathervanes and windmills of the world-, as well as the black and white illustrations that propose alternatives to the text.
The objective of the illustrator is to find the own personality of the project, which in Chance is in that search for the strangeness, mystery and irony of the images.
You can also see a series of selected pieces made in collaboration for some of the most prestigious publications in the world such as The New York Times, The New Yorker or National Geographic, as well as some of their pieces exhibited during the show Affiche 2017.
