Estoy penetrando en tu vida (I Am Penetrating in Your Life)

The work of Carlos Pazos falls within an ambiguous, contradictory space on the edge of the time’s artistic trends. It can be related to Neo-Dadaism and object poetry, but also to Pop Art; it is close to conceptual practice, but at the same time pushes the boundaries of identity politics. Beyond all this, Pazos can be seen as an artist who, in the final analysis, is breaking down the mechanisms of legitimation through which art and the artist share in merchandising and spectacle.
Estoy penetrando en tu vida (I Am Penetrating in Your Life), shows Carlos Pazos as a seducer, addressing the viewer through an attractive self-image that has undergone a transformation brought about by his own desire to reinvent himself as a star. The “star” image as a way of running from the subjectivity of the artist is a recurrent theme in the work of Marcel Duchamp – in his alter ego Rrose Sélavy – and Andy Warhol. Both were influences on Pazos, a frequent self-portraitist, who uses the notion of masquerade to exhibit a banal, artificial subjectivity. A “star” (Voy a hacer de mí una estrella [I’m Going to Make Myself a Star], another series from 1975) is the expression of the absence of the original or the representation of the absence itself of reality. By means of this artificial beautified image of himself, Pazos constructs a character to hide behind and to satisfy his need to hide himself in exhibition.

Salvador Nadales