Jose Laiño : Creative Still Life

Photographer Jose Laiño usually works in the category of creative and conceptual still life.

This series of photographs made with these simple, everyday objects commonly around us, consists of very personal works in which the author uses humor, dreamlike, irony, poetry and visual language, creating visual metaphors through mental links to other objects, symbols or iconic items that allow a new interpretation from another point of view. Photographer relates different realities through the form and likeness, proposing a perceptual play. The intention is to obtain a powerful images through everyday objects, subjecting them to changes that produce a striking effect.

In these images there is a certain balance between opposites concepts such as the natural and the artificial, the real and the unreal, the everyday and the unusual, the innocent and the wicked. These combinations are intended to create tension and stimulate the observer’s perception through a clean images built with simplicity, seemingly simple and simultaneously full of conceptual complexity leading us to reflect to various topics such as biology, human behavior, over time, interpersonal relationships, the power of nature, etc.

In most of his works, nature and human beings are always present and interrelated, they are represented by natural objets and man-made objects that both, nature and human, created and destroyed in cyclically over time. Jose Laiño is very interested in capturing these phases of development and decay on objects to use them as tools of expression.
Intentionally uses minimal resources in terms of quantity of items and the minimum actions on objects, in order to convey the ideas in a very direct way, without distractions, but at the same time achieves these images are deep in conceptual content and that put us in a dreamlike state between fantasy and reality, allowing the viewer to start up his mind when engaged to interpret and give meaning to ideas and open reflection that the author proposes. The viewer asks himself by the concept, a question has several answers in these images that seek to excite the intelligence in the observer.

His work process goes through several phases. First make notes and sketch ideas that come to mind, filling notebooks. Some of these sketches are still there for some time waiting to find the right material, others are discarded or are waiting to evolve. In another phase of the work is dedicated to finding materials and observe. In many cases also appear other makeshift concepts at this stage of observation, which are also sketched in his notebook. Are sketches in which already suggests the type of lighting, the direction of light, which seems to him most suitable to promote the concept with these selected objects.

He likes to look through the eyes of an adult and a child’s eyes simultaneously. On the one hand analyzes the form and essence, is dedicated to observe these objects for suggestions and then later dedicated to manipulate and play with the curiosity of a child. From this observation and manipulation process, a free play arises with the object. This manipulation is performed physically and digitally, sometimes it is achieved only by working with the object and others also working on editing and digital manipulation.
He says that improvisation also have some significance in the work : “Improvisation as a playful experiment, is the recovery in each of us of the savage mind, our original mind of a child. The fully developed creativity occurs when a trained adult is able to go to the sources of consciousness play, clear and intact, that little child you have inside ”
All this creative act is a form of gambling without which learning and development are impossible, this play is the root where art emerges. His creative work is play, experiment, reinterpret reality to produce something new.[Official Website]