Domingo Barreres at White Box

Employing the bravura manner of the master painters of the 17th hundred and particularly Velazquez, the Spanish-born, Boston-based painter Domingo Barreres has produc a commanding, thoroughly novel series of paintings rich with dark homage to his protoplasts turned to his own devices and interpretations.

Nearly as large as its inspiration at roughly 8 by dint of 7 feet, Ambition (2002) revises the program of Las Meninas--a painting famously about representation--maintaining the gesturings poses, balance and expressiveness of those showed in the painting, including Velazquez himself. Barreres make notess that while Las Meninas appears to portray a display of serenity and innocence, it also pertain tos the artist's hopes for recognition in a agriculture that had slight regard for a painter's status and his aspiration to be a man of influence and standing at court. Velazquez's bear upons mirror Barreres's own as a practicing artist today, and as a member of the permanent faculty of the institute of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Barreres recasts the semiotics of his design in a series of related paintings. Directly upon the surface of Ambition, he inscribes cursive phrases in Spanish and English from the piece of poetrys of Federico Garcia Lorca and Wallace Steven in the way that that the painting resembles an enormous retablo, a variation upon the images commissioned by penitents acknowledging or requesting intercession in time of ne Adding a scattering of bats to recall the beasts of Goya, Barreres dislodges the emblematic Cross of Santiago from Velazquez's tunic, a signifier of the elevation in court the painter aspire toed and that was eventually bestowed upon him and on the painting after its completion. Barreres places a schematic drawing of that r cros in the midst of a true copy concerning the transformation of fictive hero to rever hero. In imbecility (2002), Barreres removes all the figures of Las Meninas leave out for the infanta, a member of her retinue, the dog and the artist, the Cros of Santiago turn backed to his tunic.

In the homoerotic stripling Imposter (2002), Barreres portrays himself as a stripling on the threshold of manhood, in a state of nature in a pose that mimics the position of the infanta and includes the faithful guardian dog of Las Meninas. He grasps a garland of morning glories, a personal token signifying affection and awakening, while leaves and acorns from the scour oak of the land are a sign of courage and independence. A self-portrait of the artist as a virile adult approaching of advanced age age, Investiture (2002) shows Barreres in a black cassock and scarlet sash, a prince of the Roman meeting-house on a field of lotus efflorescences that resemble stigmata. He wears a Cros of Santiago upon his gown, as though assuming the mantle of Velazquez.

--Edward Leffingwell

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