Objects of Art | The Skateboards

“It's a privilege to be among these amazing contemporary artists for this project. I'm thrilled to work with Centerpoint, the Auction Collective and House of Vans, all for different yet equally great reasons. As an artist, it's amazing to have the opportunity to be part of a cause that's so easy to believe in. Painting on a skateboard was a uniquely satisfying surface to work on and I'm very fond of the result it created. The tone of the wood was a beautiful background, which is why I left so much of it untouched or with a thin layer of paint so you can see through to the texture of the skateboard.” - Rene Gonzalez, 2020.

Growing up first in Canada as the son of political refugees, then Costa Rica in a Latin culture he didn’t understand, and since coming to London to study, Rene tries to convey in his images his experience of the world as a beautiful and slightly scary enigma. A place where we can never be entirely familiar with "the recognizable" and that "the foreign" is part of the everyday.

Near an entrance, time presents itself combines these formative elements of the artist's background: the lavish columns and decorative arches of the British abbey are juxtaposed with the wild and lush Costa Rican tropical flora. At the same time, traditional Latin American religious figures take refuge in the Abbey ceremoniously positioning themselves in front of the Gothic stained glass windows, alluding to the parallels between the different cultures and views on spirituality.

As often in his work, the artist depicts these seductive and dark visual narratives, inspired by his perception of feeling like "an outsider". Blending the inside and outside of both architecture and cultural constructs, the resulting images appear as if from a modern fairy tale where creatures, objects and spaces can be both seductive and terrifying and fundamentally, unpredictable.

You can hear more about this work in our interview with Rene Gonzalez here. 

Accolades 
Rene Gonzalez graduated with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art Painting from City & Guilds of London Art School. His work has been exhibited at Messums Wiltshire, the Rebecca Hossack Gallery, The Great Western Studios (solo show), Salone del Mobile, Milan, Art Helix Gallery
NY, the OXO Tower Gallery and Galerie Belem, Paris, (solo show).

Rene was awarded second place in the Art Gemini 2014 Prize, first place in the Clyde & Co Blank Canvas Art Prize 2015, and was selected to be part of the Jackson’s Open Painting Prize 2018.