Nuria Riaza has an interest in anachronistic visuals — the elegant, female profiles with low-slung chignons and the elaborate facial hair fashions of yore. Her ballpoint-pen drawings — which span impressive lengths, sometimes nearly human scale — strip these elements found in old family photographs away from their contexts. She slices them up as if they were collages, using pens instead of scissors to remix the photorealistic elements. Marble-smooth skin adopts the literal qualities of the material, swirling with a monochromatic pattern of blue and white. Faces become transformed into kaleidoscopic visions, as if we were viewing them with insect eyes. The artist and illustrator does not dwell on the past: She appropriates it for her hallucinatory visions of a bizarre future.
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Celebrated artist and cartoonist