What stands out in Sócrates' artistic output is the angle he passes on to his artworks. A point of view with which he projects snapshots onto his canvases.
The heightened, frenetic, rushed pace of big cities keeps us from being distracted by what happens around us. The Malaga painter Sócrates Rízquez scrutinizes the effervescent arteries of Tokyo and New York, and manages to hold on to urban stress in order to turn it into art. How? He creates metropolitan scenes that capture with millimetric precision whatever he observes. His compositions reveal a photographic approach, almost documentary. And he pulls it off through a virtuoso realism subject to the influences of pop art.
The neon lights, the signs, the dizzying buildings, the crush of cars, the traffic lights, the racket of the crowd, the hurry. Whatever moves the street seems to freeze for the seconds a snapshot takes. And then Sócrates gathers up those scenes brimming with what goes on in cities and pins down everyday details doomed to go unnoticed.
Working with enamel lets him bring to the canvas the city's buzzing lights and the glow spilling from the suggestive colors of the signs. With this luminosity he breathes life into cold buildings and impersonal cosmopolitan streets. But he also plays with monochrome intensity, which sets a slower speed and lets you contemplate what is still moving.
Where time inevitably stops is in Granada. Another pace runs there, at least in the Alhambra. The impressive views of it offered by the Albaicín quarter are depicted by the Malaga painter through his very own angle. From inside it, his reading of the Patio de los Arrayanes comes as a surprise. A painting that looks as though it were made following the parameters of a spontaneous photograph.
Sócrates Rízquez has kept a close bond with art since he was young. Self-taught, he is always looking for styles and techniques with which to take on new challenges.
Discover more artworks by Sócrates Rízquez here!
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