.
“I don’t usually speak about things that are true and important to me very often,” reveals Pedro Paricio. “When I was younger, I talked about myself all the time until I discovered that people prefer to speak about themselves. It was then that I stopped speaking and started listening. It is much better this way. ”
Born January 16, 1982 in the Canary Islands, an archipelago of seven islands of volcanic origin in the Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of Africa, Paricio was raised in La Orotava, a little village in the valley on the island of Tenerife (home to El Teide, the highest mountain in Spain). Though its 35,000 inhabitants may seem small by metropolitan standards, it is one of the largest villages on the island. While technology has provided a means for advancement, daily life is deeply rooted in the local traditions of the past, particularly those from the Venezuelan C culture. “I always say we are closer to Venezuelathan we are to the rest of Spain,” Paricio observes. “I don’t think of myself as Spanish. I always think of myself as a Canarian.”
.
For Paricio, life in the Canary Islands is without stress. A tropical paradise, La Orotava offered mountains, beaches, surfing, good food, beautiful people, and relaxation. Less expensive than Barcelona, one does not need to earn a lot of money to live well. On the flipside, La Orotava offers little contemporary culture. “There are always a group of people trying to make new music and art, but there is little or no support from the public,” Paricio explains. “Those in my generation who want to experiment must leave the island and travel to Spain or Europe in order to do so.” After beginning his art studies at the College of Fine Arts in Tenerife, Paricio left the island to study art in Salamanca, an ancient city built during the Roman Empire in the center of Spain. He finished his studies at the University of Barcelona with a degree in Fine Arts in 2006.
.
To support himself as an artist, Paricio has done countless jobs which include delivering pizza, working in a restaurant kitchen, waiting tables at a luxury restaurant, dressing up as a clown for children’s birthday parties, entertaining for Havana Club (the Cuban rum), working in a bookstore, working as a gamekeeper, unloading trucks, assisting photographers, being a curator, journalist, art editor, and advertising salesman… amongst many other things.
.
As an artist, Paricio has worked in sculpture, video, and performance but, as he notes, “With painting I am totally free. I only need a white surface, paint, and a brush. I don’t need big tools or much money, only my mind and my time. Painting is our oldest art (you may remember out ancestors painting in caves). It is part of our DNA code.” Describing his work as “ Abstract Street/Pop Art,” Paricio appropriates cultural references to title his paintings, linking his paintings directly to our shared cultural history. For example, he takes Tian Zhuangzhuang’s film, “Dao Ma Zei” and translates it into “El Ladron de Caballos” for one work. “I love this film,” Paricio explains, “so I put this title to my painting. You can say that I am a thief of names. I create paintings, not names.”
.
An admirer of 20th century masters Joseph Beuys, Andy Warhol, Mark Rothko, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, Paricio also studies the works of Spanish legends Velazquez and Goya. “I want to mix street art with traditional art to show the power of abstract art. I want to combine the ideas of Clement Greenberg with the style of Keith Haring. I love critical theory and art theory so much I had considered becoming a curator rather than a painter. But I need to create, to explain something, and my paintings are the vehicle for that. I love the freedom of abstraction and I love the power of materials and color. But I do not believe abstract art is a new world; it is a world inside the world in which it was born and provides a new vision of the world in which we are all living. It is freedom from the structure of the mind and of the computerized world. We are caught in a system and live together in a comfortable world where we want easy culture. We want only to make beautiful and funny things. But I want to think and develop my mind, to free it from its confines. I want to open the secret door. ”
.
Paricio describes his painting as the search for a hidden truth beneath the obvious reality we share, a truth to which conventional means will not provide us access. Consider his metaphor of an acid trip: “If you have tested it, you know that the world can change, not just in your eyes but in your mind. When you are on a trip, a car is a car, but you know that it means more than the superficial definition. You realize its symbolism, it’s meaning to both the individual and the masses. You know that it means more than you will ever understand and you accept that. And when the trip is finished, the world is not the same place it was when you left.”