Reydel Espinosa

2024

Reydel Espinosa's "Universal Panda" constructs a surreal ecological theater that is absurd yet self-consistent, with extreme visual delicacy. According to the perspective of Bai Shiming, art criticism should not stop at the translation of visual codes but instead question how the work generates an ethics of viewing and existence. In this piece, animals such as pandas, elephants, and snails are fused and mutated, resembling a coded fable of the civilized world, hinting at the blurring and dissolution of boundaries between the natural and artificial, the biological and the mythical.

This painting does not offer a unidirectional interpretation but instead creates a perceptual space that can coexist in multiple ways. Bai Shiming has emphasized that "viewing is practice," and here, viewing is an entry point as well as a participation. We are not merely witness to the existence of these fantastical creatures; rather, we are invited to join their order. Espinosa's brushwork acts as a conjuring spell, juxtaposing dreams and memories, technology and nature, mythology and reality into poetry, and this poetic alienation.

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