LEONARDO VARGAS
At the crossroads of gesture and reflection, Leonardo Vargas approaches painting as an act of transformation and dialogue. His practice is rooted in a careful exploration of visual materials: he draws from historical archives, art history, fashion photography, and digital streams, extracting images that he subjects to the test of pictorial matter.
On the canvas, these fragments become the site of a subtle confrontation between the technical coldness of mediated images and the unpredictable warmth of the human gesture. Vargas is committed to going beyond mere reproduction or the utility of the image, seeking to tip it into the unexpected, the emotional, the unforeseen. His painting aims to reintroduce sensation, to slow the gaze, to open the image to the possibility of the unknown.
For him, it is not about fixing a reality but offering a sensitive reading, where colour, light, and matter become vectors for a profound visual experience. Far from any ostentatious virtuosity, his approach favours the tension between the refinement of contemporary imagery and the raw, sometimes torn aspect of human experience. This process, in which the image is endlessly invited to reinvent itself, propels his work into perpetual becoming, where each canvas becomes an invitation to contemplation and introspection.
Thus, for Leonardo Vargas, painting is about questioning the memory of images—their ability to be transformed, to become charged with meaning, and to turn into language. It is also, always, a way to rediscover the human presence at the heart of paint itself, even in its flaws and bursts of brilliance.
Trained in Fine Arts and in Modern and Contemporary Art History between Bogotá, Utrecht, and Strasbourg, and as a member of the ACCRA group, he regularly exhibits in France and internationally.
