CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 1/30/2021

New from Americas Society, the first major monograph on Feliciano Centurión!

Featured spreads—showing Heloisa Schneiders da Silva, Feliciano Centurión and Madelen Cendoya in the studio they shared with Ana López (1988) and the crocheted work on blanket, "Medusas (Jellyfish)" (1994)—are from Feliciano Centurión, the first major monograph on the queer, Paraguayan-born artist who died of AIDS-related illness in 1996. "Blanket:" Centurión wrote, "everyday object, easily available, warmth, shelter, protection. Affective, sensorial support. The painting is another emotional charge, that translates feelings.
Removed from its everyday context, the blanket becomes a support for painting, in itself an artistic object that, hanging on the wall, can make us recall ancient tapestries.
It is essential that we 'choose' the materials with which we work. Our consumer society offers us an infinite selection that we can 'appropriate' to make 'new objects' with which we can live.
But once we decontextualize them, assemble them, paint them, or assail them, they reveal that they passed through our feelings. Consummated love.
The eclecticism of our times, whose diversity of languages and information demand a deeper engagement from us, allows us to 'appropriate' with complete freedom so that we can express ourselves.
I embrace the everyday, the banal, the ironic, the playful, happiness, and amusement. Images from dreams, from the everyday, obvious, with a taste of kitsch, all of which confirm to me that painting is simply an act of faith."