2018 Catalogue Archive

Aware of, and always questioning, his relationship to art history as a representational painter, Francisco Moreno continually reinterprets genres and images from the past. In Plant Still Life with Spilt Beer, Moreno creates his own still life painting containing a skull, a spilled Tecate tallboy beer can, and a Devil’s Ivy in a pot painted with a Mexican design. The still life takes the form of a memento mori (Latin for “remember that you must die”), artworks that implore viewers to take on more spiritual values by reflecting on symbols of death (ie: skull) and the transitory nature of the material world (ie: spilled beer). Though not his only source of inspiration, Moreno often looks to the history of Mexican painting (and thereby Spanish painting), seen here in the gold paint application inspired by Mexican colonial painters working in the 1700s and the upside down skull lifted from Allegory of Vanity by Spanish Baroque painter Antonio de Pereda y Salgado. Loaded with historical and contemporary references, Moreno’s work exists as a playful take on one of the most essential cultural subjects. Earlier this year, Moreno’s Chapel was on view at Erin Cluley Gallery.