Memories of the Body

“The landscape of these paintings is configured in an area situated between the real and unreal, sleep and delirium, with the awareness that there are symbolic driving forces in the human psyche, forces that push us to create imaginary worlds, myths, dreams, desires that often connect with the mystery of sexuality and death, with birth and the fragility of human life. It’s also in the case of this painting; it accounts for the many incarnations of human history, as a sort of excavation of the senses that are found within sacrifice, violence and death.”

(text by Eugenia Brito, poet and Chilean critic )

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Del Valle previously worked with used cloths, pillowcases, and sheets, which he intervened upon based on their original stains (the Huellas series). Later, he sought out other used textiles to work on: women’s underwear. Multiple friends, and friends of friends, collected underwear in Barcelona, and with them he created small-format works. Then, inspired by the stories he imagined around these fabrics, he painted these paintings.