Luis Miguel Rico

“My workshop is full of materials that are familiar to all of us due to their use in the field of Fine Arts, among which I highlight papers that I dye previously for later manipulation. All of them, appear randomly on my work table, add to my problems of composition, which I try to solve directly on the support of the work.

In this act of composing, for me it is essential that those materials that I use and arrange on the surface, connect and come to have a unitary meaning, giving rise during the creative process to the non-renunciation of my work as a playful way for the creation and production of my works. Parallel to my collage work, I present a series of works where I exclusively use the medium of painting. With them, I generate a series of forms, which maintain a certain link with my collage structures. I use spots of broken colors and other more saturated colors where the density of the paint, more or less liquid, also plays an important role”

These stain structures are simple in outline and try to have a spatial sense close to the work that I create with my work on paper; superposition of planes, whose form is integrated on top of the previous one, or not, allowing the viewer to understand the different work processes that the creation of each of the works goes through.

Luis Miguel Rico

ST, 2022

Oleo sobre lienzo

150 x 114cm

Interview:

What inspires you when you create?

When I create, I am inspired by any element that gives me strength in color, for example a sunset, a walk along the seashore or nature itself. When the whole issue of confinement happened to us, I was out in the street again, I am lucky to live near the countryside and I saw the blooming of spring, that strength, those colors, the shapes that reached me much more.

¿En qué has estado trabajando recientemente?

Recientemente he estado trabajando en composiciones partiendo de la base del collage, que son abstracciones geométricas, siempre ligadas un poco a la naturaleza y a la forma orgánica, y sobre todo la superposiciones de planos, unos más quebrados otros más saturados, buscando siempre la composición armónica.

Luis Miguel Rico

Sin título, 2021

Oil on canvas

150 x 120cm

What have you been working on recently?

Recently I have been working on compositions based on collage, which are geometric abstractions, always linked to nature and organic form, and especially the overlapping of planes, some more broken, others more saturated, always looking for a harmonious composition.

What do you expect from your participation in Art Madrid?

From my participation in Art Madrid I hope to make myself known to a wider and more specialized public, deal with other artists and generate some kind of synergy with them, maybe some collaboration and enjoy the experience.

Luis Miguel Rico

ST, 2022

Oleo sobre lienzo

150 x 120cm

How did you come to this type of work?

Through experimenting with different materials and supports, ideas came up, sometimes I put them aside and other times I took them as good, and other times what I had discarded at the end have come back again and I'm applying it again.

What do you intend to convey with your work?

When I see a work of art I feel a lot of emotion, in the end the good thing about the artist is that he is able to transfer the emotion to a pictorial work, or whatever it is. So from my humble state, I try to transmit part of what I feel, when creating a work, to the viewer.

Luis Miguel Rico participates at Art Madrid with Gärna Gallery, alongside with Fernando de Ana, Hayden Rearik, Lucia Gorostegui y Lars Zech

The painting of Daniel Bum (Villena, Alicante, 1994) takes shape as a space for subjective elaboration, where the figure emerges not so much as a representational motif but as a vital necessity. The repetition of this frontal, silent character responds to an intimate process: painting becomes a strategy for navigating difficult emotional experiences—an insistent gesture that accompanies and alleviates feelings of loneliness. In this sense, the figure acts as a mediator between the artist and a complex emotional state, linking the practice of painting to a reconnection with childhood and to a vulnerable dimension of the self.

The strong autobiographical dimension of his work coexists with a formal distance that is not the result of conscious planning, but rather functions as a protective mechanism. Visual restraint, an apparent compositional coolness, and an economy of means do not neutralize emotion; instead, they contain it, avoiding the direct exposure of the traumatic. In this way, the tension between affect and restraint becomes a structural feature of his artistic language. Likewise, the naïve and the disturbing coexist in his painting as inseparable poles, reflecting a subjectivity permeated by mystery and unconscious processes. Many images emerge without a clearly defined prior meaning and only reveal themselves over time, when temporal distance allows for the recognition of the emotional states from which they arose.

The Long Night. Oil, acrylic, and charcoal on canvas. 160 × 200 cm. 2024.

The human figure appears frequently in your work: frontal, silent, suspended. What interests you about this presence that seems both affirmative and absent?

I wouldn’t say that anything in particular interests me. I began painting this figure because there were emotions I couldn’t understand and a feeling that was very difficult for me to process. This character emerged during a very complicated moment in my life, and the act of making it—and remaking it, repeating it again and again—meant that, during the process, I didn’t feel quite so alone. At the same time, it kept me fresh and connected me to an inner child who was broken at that moment, helping me get through the experience in a slightly less bitter way.

Santito. Acrylic and oil on canvas. 81 × 65 cm. 2025.

There is a strong affective dimension in your work, but also a calculated distance, a kind of formal coldness. What role does this tension between emotion and restraint play?

I couldn’t say exactly what role that tension plays. My painting is rooted in the autobiographical, in memory, and in situations I have lived through that were quite traumatic for me. Perhaps, as a protective mechanism—to prevent direct access to that vulnerability, or to keep it from becoming harmful—that distance appears unconsciously. It is not something planned or controlled; it simply emerges and remains there.

Night Painter. Acrylic on canvas. 35 × 27 cm. 2025.

Your visual language oscillates between the naïve and the unsettling, the familiar and the strange. How do these tensions coexist for you, and what function do they serve in your visual exploration?

I think it reflects who I am. One could not exist without the other. The naïve could not exist without the unsettling; for me, they necessarily go hand in hand. I am deeply drawn to mystery and to the act of painting things that even I do not fully understand. Many of the expressions or portraits I create emerge from the unconscious; they are not planned. It is only afterwards that I begin to understand them—and almost never immediately. A considerable amount of time always passes before I can recognize how I was feeling at the moment I made them.

Qi. Acrylic on canvas. 81 × 65 cm. 2025.

The formal simplicity of your images does not seem to be a matter of economy, but of concentration. What kind of aesthetic truth do you believe painting can reach when it strips itself of everything superfluous?

I couldn’t say what aesthetic truth lies behind that simplicity. What I do know is that it is something I need in order to feel calm. I feel overwhelmed when there are too many elements in a painting, and I have always been drawn to the minimal—to moments when there is little, when there is almost nothing. I believe that this stripping away allows me to approach painting from a different state: more focused, more silent. I can’t fully explain it, but it is there that I feel able to work with greater clarity.

Crucifixion. Acrylic on canvas. 41 × 33 cm. 2025.

To what extent do you plan your work, and how much space do you leave for the unexpected—or even for mistakes?

I usually feel more comfortable leaving space for the unexpected. I am interested in uncertainty; having everything under control strikes me as rather boring. I have tried it on some occasions, especially when I set out to work on a highly planned series, with fixed sketches that I then wanted to translate into painting, but it was not something I identified with. I felt that a fundamental part of the process disappeared: play—that space in which painting can surprise even myself. For that reason, I do not tend to plan too much, and when I do, it is in a very simple way: a few lines, a plane of color. I prefer everything to happen within the painting itself.