I'm not the biggest fan of Magic Realism, usually it's a bit airy fairy for me but when it comes to the art of Canadian painter Rob Gonsalves I make an exception. It's more about the ideas for me than the painterly treatment, I just like the way he ever so gently screws with the viewer's mind. It's like he's taken a step away from Surrealism and headed towards reason, la perceptual ogic, a centre ground where the rules still do apply, they just fail to conform. Let's just say when it comes to concept, Gonsalves' mind most definitely leans more towards realism than magic. Here's what Wikipedia says about his approach:
"Although Gonsalves' work is often categorized as surrealistic, it differs because the images are deliberately planned and result from conscious thought. Ideas are largely generated by the external world and involve recognizable human activities, using carefully planned illusionist devices. Gonsalves injects a sense of magic into realistic scenes. As a result, the term "Magic Realism" describes his work accurately. His work is an attempt to represent human beings' desire to believe the impossible, to be open to possibility."
It's a strangely familiar part of the subconscious that Gonsalves attempts to access, part childhood memory, part social norm, part perceptual, and so on. There's something of a futility in many of the subjects, as if we're simply following a set plan, a fate, marked and boundaried by a multiverse of every so slightly different and as yet unresolved realities. A finely blended mix of the highly recognisable and the primal distilled in a fluidity of chaos that puts paid to all the seemingly fixed laws of physics we humans so crave. Otherwise life is but a dream, or at best, a guess.
Rob Gonsalves offers up a range of giclée prints, original paintings and takes commissions too – www.robgonsalves.com.
