YOUNG ART: The Crowds of Gómez Cangas

Alejandro Gómez Cangas’s is a perfectly established poetry, the result of substantial research work. Gómez Cangas reflects on the singularities that make up the groups, from relatively small ensembles to large crowds. Thinking that any group of people is a homogeneous mass is, in any case, a more or less intentional, more or less innocent, more or less convenient mistake... The group may be encouraged by a group of interests, aptitudes or attitudes... but each member is also realized in their individuality, in essentially intimate settings.

And it can’t be ignored that sometimes what unites or even articulates a group on time is a situation of conflict, or mere chance. A crowd is, although it may seem paradoxical, an expression of dissimilarities.

Gómez Cangas is interested in highlighting these distinctions, and in all of his works, which are based on portraits of ordinary people (not fictional characters), the viewer can glimpse at the multiplicity of potential paths of that recreated humanity.

Alejandro Gómez Cangas continues to develop this integrating concept in his work. Recent pieces confirm that proposal.

He affirms it in his notes: "A photographic and individual investigation of the characters will be the starting point for large crowds of people; subjects marching towards an unknown destination aspart of an infantry that keepsits goal in the path ahead. The mass is not presented as something anonymous or impersonal but as a composite, it abounds in details, it needsa few minutes of contemplation.The diversity of people then becomes a point of attention, paying attention to each individual, stopping the gaze.The experimentation goes on from the general, almost abstract, to the particular and imperceptible, as something similar occurs when the idea of a 'different being' merges with the rest of the people or the feeling that 'in unity lies strength'. that crowd of which we are part in one way or another".

That is definitely the idea: we can all be in any of these crowds... and surely we have been... and we’ll be again. The artist does not judge, although he does problematize. In the end, the strength and durability of the ties between the human beings that make up a crowd depend on an infinity of conditions... that the artist does not intend to make explicit.

Gómez Cangas seems to be more seduced by the mystery of the very personal path of each one individuals, their irreducible freedom. Here we do not speak of herds.

A VIRTUAL EXHIBITION, ORGANIZED BY THE ARTEMORFOSIS PLATFORM: https://vrallart.com/vr-exhibitions/eg/one_crowd-many_paths/

Translated by Amilkal Labañino / CubaSí Translation Staff