The art of Julio Anaya Cabanding occupies a unique position at the intersection of painting, installation, found art and graffiti. His works, which he refers to as “pictorial interventions” are direct references to the art history canon. He forgoes canvas and paper, opting to recreate famous works of art directly on discarded cardboard or abandoned walls. The present example, Pictorial intervention of “The Key to the Fields” from René Magritte, 2021, sees Cabanding recreate the Belgian surrealist’s painting of a shattered window on a piece of cardboard. Complete with a trompe l’oeil gilt frame, the work prominently exhibits the delicate precision that has garnered Cabanding critical acclaim.
The artist cures the sheets of found cardboard with latex to fortify their structural integrity. This process also preserves the signs of wear–such as tears, folds and creases– assimilating and weaving the physical condition of the object into the conceptual fabric of the works. In turn, themes of decay emerge from Cabanding’s work–something the artist confirms as a driving factor behind his use of cardboard, as it "shows the passage of time and deterioration."i
This undercurrent of temporality is further reinforced by the links Cabanding forges between his work and the pillars of art history. Through his adaptations, the artist removes celebrated works from their museum context, refracting the prestige and grandeur intrinsic to these masterpieces through a lens of modern vernacular. He confronts the notions of pomposity and exclusivity often attributed to the fine art sphere by distilling artistic paragons and rendering them in modest materials that have been cast aside. Works like the present lot engender questions about the value of art and how this value shifts not only over time but with varying levels of viewing accessibility.
