Excerpt from the text “Images that bleed” by Alberto Martín

[…] in (his latest works), there are some elements that make possible for José Luis Pinto to study in detail the processes of transgression, transfiguration and re-definition of the image. Firstly, the use of his own body as the support on which the image is shaped. Secondly, the use of blood (here, an artificial liquid that simulates it) as the material through which the shape- image is created. Thirdly, the use of religious image and icons as a reference to the sacred, and as the concept which articulates the exhi- bition. However, the feeling that this exhibition leaves on the viewer is one of pain; pain linked to the presence of the open wound and the blood, fluid with which we have an ambiguous relation but that according to Ernest Bloch “can not have another destiny than that of a living, talking and social man”.

[…] there is no doubt that José Luis Pinto’s work does not only flow over the surface of our skin, it also gets inside our body where the blood flows. In his work, the blood crosses the corporal limits that confine it and emanates to shape images in which nature has already been modified. The role of blood here is not other than the connection between the inside and the outside of the human body, the wound represents the limits that can be crossed and give way to an even stronger awareness of images, a level of awareness that corresponds to the freedom of imagination or to the phantasmagoric existence of an unaffordable memory.