Grua (The crane), 2026

Jose Ricardo Contreras Gonzalez  

An industrial structure floats against a soft, gradient sky. This oil painting evokes a sense of suspension and quiet introspection. The composition centers on four luminous purple cylinders hanging from a mechanical arm. These shapes glow with an internal light, contrasting with the deep shadow of the foreground. Below, a dark, jagged silhouette suggests a distant terrain or a dormant city. 
The artist merges figurative precision with a dreamlike atmosphere. This approach reflects a deep investigation into the mechanisms of representation. By blending physical forms with digital sensibilities, the scene moves beyond a simple landscape. It becomes a meditation on space and intellectual exploration. The rhythmic placement of the vessels creates a visual cadence that draws the eye across the canvas. A thin line arcs through the air, adding a delicate tension to the heavy machinery. The subdued palette emphasizes the ethereal quality of the purple light. This artwork captures a moment of stillness and curiosity. The interplay between the artificial structures and the organic horizon highlights a duality between human invention and the natural world. Every brushstroke contributes to a precise yet evocative narrative.

While "Composition for Film" evokes notable associations with masters of painting and poetry known precisely for their ability to evoke slow time, intimacy, poetry, and introversion (Hopper, de Chririco, Dickinson), there is also the connection to open space, to light, which is an elemental sign of exteriority, of belonging to the cosmos, and very important for Jose Ricardo Contreras's work are the equipment and props that allow photography and film to capture these sensations.
All this intensity is enlivened by "Change of Light," which, without betraying the central theme, summons a banal but extremely useful activity of generating light, even if domestic, all poetry worn out by the vicissitudes of subsistence. elemental, but lightened by a sense of humor."

This series of pieces is the result of an investigation into the use of light as a tool for the representation of reality and image creation. Starting in the 40s, the work of the artist Edward Hopper took significant recognition that led to becoming a benchmark for cinematographers in everyone, especially because of their relationship in film noir and the influence exercised by the painter in the work of filmmakers such as Alfred Hitchcock, Jim Jarmusch, Martin Scorsese, and Wim Wender. Hopper was inspired by the cinema to create his paintings and the cinema became inspired by Hopper.
The images that the series represents were taken from the film and behind the scenes of the film "Shirley Vision of Reality" by 2013 by the Austrian director Gustav Deutsch, in an exercise that I seek to literally recreate a series of paintings by Hopper and with they narrate the story of three decades beginning in North America from the 30s and going until the 60s. The scenes depicted in the film are interior images inhabited by solitary people, who relate to the outside through the entrances of light and sound, images that. They speak of a world that was, but resembles the intermittent state of simulation and quarantine of the contemporary world.

Mounted on a stretcher