DAVID MACHO

In his works, images such as the well-known living room of the Simpson family -one of the artist’s most important series- share the canvas with Steven Spielberg filming the jaws of the shark from ‘Jaws’ or the iconic scene of Carrie and Big in ‘Sex and the City’ where the characters accidentally fall into a lake in Central Park, being observed by the characters from the renowned sitcom ‘Friends.

Every character depicted has their place, their space, and their reason for being in David’s work. Nothing is superfluous, nothing is lacking, or perhaps it is, as it is impossible to condense in limited space everything that is part of oneself. Far from what their chaotic and crowded scenes full of people may reflect -in an allusion to the most canonical definition of the classic concept of ‘horror vacui’ (fear of empty space)-, the artist’s work is an intimate and personal portrait. It offers a critical and nostalgic look at adolescence, a challenging stage in which he had to become an adult overnight and found refuge in television, cinema, the internet, and popular culture.

Behind each of the works presented in Como pollo sin cabeza is intrinsically a piece of what David is, as an artist, but above all as a person. At the risk of falling into clichés, the exhibition introduces us to David Macho, the artistic alter ego of a boy born in Santander with the same name, settled in Barcelona -the city where he blossomed as an artist- where he talks about his life, his passions, his fears, his obsessions, and his personal ‘madness’.

Starting with Once Upon a Time the End, a work that began during the global pandemic in 2020 and extended until 2022, it is an exercise in introspection that helped the artist remember and rediscover the films and series that brought him joy, as well as those that tormented him. In this work, the focus is on the concept of the ‘making-of’ and the representation of scenes as ‘micro-theaters’ or sets, a resource that he will use in his subsequent works, allowing him to arrange the characters and scenes without them intertwining.

Those small TV sets give way to the big set, such as the one from the original ‘Grand Prix,’ in ‘El cuadro del abuelo y el niño’ (The Painting of the Grandfather and the Child), a reference to the slogan of this iconic television program that brought together so many Spanish households in front of the television in the 90s and 2000s. It was an entertainment show based on various challenges that pitted two towns in Spain against each other. For the artist, it serves as a tribute to the show and the summers of his childhood, and as a way to evoke the concept of leisure itself. The artwork highlights the intrinsic nature of leisure in our human condition, providing us with freedom and an opportunity to escape from our daily duties and obligations.

The artist’s memories give way to his personal concerns about art and everything that surrounds it in ‘Expressarte: el arte es lo que dejas salir. AW’ (Express Art: Art is What You Let Out. AW), making a clear use of words with the term ‘arte’ (art). David delves into the various approaches that exist to art through the admiration for the ‘amateur,’ the longing to get closer to something unknown yet captivating. According to David, ‘it’s a fascination with the absurd because you don’t know where that passion comes from.’

Macho’s aim is to depict the diverse ways in which society contemplates and promotes art while emphasizing the duality that exists in its reception. On one hand, there may be rejection, but at the same time, there arises a need to share and express one’s opinion.

Without abandoning his thoughts, the exhibition also makes room for conspiracies, urban legends, and myths. In the artist’s words, ‘I felt the need to bring into the pictorial, into the image, those things that have never been depicted, that we have no photographs of, no visual references.’

Courtesy of the gallery