Untitled (2000)
Mixed media on canvas
195 x 194.5 cm
BA Collection
Inventory No.: 2000.40
Defining the work of Judas Arrieta as one word, style or movement is to limit his work to the point of contradicting the method he uses to produce the images. Neo-Baroque, pop, naive? It is better to just describe it as delirious, playful, perverse, hybrid, chaotic. Arrieta, a doodler – as he considers himself – prefers to refer to his work as Manga Art, Kung Fu Art or sport painting. What can be mentioned with certainty is his obsession with Asian culture to the point that Manga, Anime, Japanese films, Bushido, Chinese traditional painting, calligraphy, Communist China aesthetics, and advertising icons are his source of inspiration. He is particularly interested in using fun and humour to make his audience reflect; he does not scrimp on means and materials to do so, even though he favours drawing and painting to a certain extent.
His hallmark is to overlap images, texts and calligraphy; a gesture that shows his interest in constructing and consuming images, over-information and disinformation, analogue and digital language, and, in general, in how the image is today conceived based on all the technological, economic and social changes, along with the forms of consumption, spectacle and pleasure with which his generation has grown up.