Under the spell of the smallest things. An intro to Gonzalo de Miguel.

Name : Gonzalo de Miguel

Born / Based in : Valladolid 1980. Based in Madrid, Spain.

Making art since: 1997

What’s one thing you’d like people to know about you that doesn’t show up in your work?

A couple of years ago, I joined a new line of work in set design and props, in the art department of an audiovisual production company for well-known television platforms, which is opening up a range of possibilities for my personal artistic work. It all adds up.

Which three tools, materials, or rituals are essential to your practice?

What I always have on hand while I work is glue, original photographs or photographs on paper, acrylic paint, and found objects or supports. I have one more tool to help me get started.

What makes a work unmistakably yours?

Signing it, of course. (Just kidding.)

This question is very relative, because I always work under the influence of other artists from the past and present, and that inclination makes you resemble one or the other.

For more than a decade now, I have combined painting, photography, and sculpture in my work, almost hand in hand. Perhaps what is unmistakable is the spontaneity and freshness of the strokes or the striking color of the pastel spots in my paintings, with a certain irony always disguised as a childlike world.

Can you walk us through your process—from idea to finished piece?

When I work for myself, I like to improvise. Once I enter the studio, I am surrounded by objects, photographs, old magazines, and I always start my work by choosing an image that suggests intrigue, morbid curiosity, mystery… above all, the tones of the image, its flaws, its age, its texture, provoke me to go beyond the photograph itself.

Once I have chosen the image, I search through piles of materials that I often collect from the street and select one that has a certain connection with the photograph; and this is where I begin to improvise according to what the work requires.I never consider a piece finished. I feel that it is always unfinished. This is the misfortune of a creative person: knowing exactly when to stop.

It’s true that often the work forces you to leave it alone, but that feeling will always remain. Few pieces have left my studio with exact precision, and those are the ones I trulyadmire.

This is the purpose of my work. To evolve toward synthesis and minimize with few elements a piece that speaks for itself.

What’s something that’s been influencing your work lately—an image, sound, idea, or feeling?

I am influenced by countless things. Meeting artists on social media has contributed greatly to my work. But I am also influenced by the smallest things, such as the texture or stains on a cracked wall, or a landscape I have never seen before.

Perhaps what influences my work the most is the concept of “RUIN.” I believe that idea has never left me.

What’s the latest project you’ve been working on, and what excites you about it?

A year ago, I returned from Lithuania on a scholarship and produced experimental collage works. Mobile collages. Pieces, photographs, collages that move using simple machinery, opening up a more sculptural and three-dimensional field for me. My focus is precisely on this.