JOSÉ MARÍA CANO

That exhibit, entitled, This Is Just Business, appropriated its imagery from the letters of his divorce and mixed with drawings of his son. He painted the most aggressive letters from his wife’s lawyers on backgrounds, which resemble desert or icy landscapes, that, when combined with drawings of his son, attempted to re-contextualise the lawyer’s letters, the purpose of which were to damage Cano’s reputation in the midst of a contentious divorce. This work, painted meticulously by him and hung on the wall took, attempted to undermine the power of those letters. In other words, a letter on his desk which might make you think he was a despicable person, when painted and hung on his dining room wall might made you consider whether the person who wrote it who was despicable, rather Cano himself. Because his divorce took place at the same time as the Iraq war while he painted the letters of his divorce he also painted pictures about the war. He saw a rhythmic parallelism between the two events which coincided in time, namely a confrontation with economic undertones against a so-called enemy and where innocent people suffered the consequences, especially children. His paintings with drawings of his son are also from this era. Monochromatic drawings on a sheet of paper. Simple but conceptually very interesting.