Victor Payares

My works materialise recollections into new arrangements and convictions. I remember my grandparents’ house in which I spent a lot of time in during my youth in Havana. My grandfather, who was a recognised architect, built it in 1958 and he received national architecture awards for the building’s harmonious mix of modernism with Art Nouveau designs. The windows, in particular, are something that I vividly recall; they were imported from Paris and all originally made around the time of the 1900 Exposition Universelle in the French capital. These windows, ornate with hyperbolas and parabolas, were my lenses to the world. My current paintings simultaneously feature curvilinear forms, which, like the windows, frame landscapes and at once transform such memories into objects of visual discourse. I am further inspired by elements of the everyday; I collect disregarded objects such as cables, clothing labels and trampled glasses found lying in the streets and repurposes them on the canvas. The paintings are consequently enlivened with diverse textures and at once recontextualises such items from today, transposing any of their accustomed meaning or worth.