Is anybody out there, who still gets deeply moved by the bloody scenes in the hourly newscast? Sitting comfortably on our couches we stare at the everyday violence with indifference. Another assassination? A further rape? A new genocide? All right, we can do nothing about it and shrug the shoulders. We get bombarded with bad news; the information overload kills our emotions, our compassion. Death is an abstract item, permanently present and still banished from our life. But things change when we get in a life-threatening situation. Facing our own mortality leaves a haunting impression. Ricardo Harris-Fuentes knows about it.

My current body of work is a reflection on my experiences as a child growing up in regions of conflict in South America. I believe that my exposure to death in my surroundings at an early age had a decisive effect on the trajectory of my life and ultimately led to my decisions to study both philosophy and art.

The unexpected confrontation with death and mortality: Ricardo Harris-Fuentes shares this experience with us. Images, picked from newscast and contemporary photojournalism are basic elements of his paintings. He combines images from different sources and creates new and surprising sceneries: A woman wearing nothing but a veil is standing next to a man pulling the tube of tank from the sandy ground. A mysterious combination. Other paintings are more explicit: A man looking at a range of skulls, a person lying face down and alone on a battlefield, mummed soldiers in a wooded area: We do not see their faces; we can not read their minds. But instinctively we know how they are feeling. We are moved. And Ricardo Harris-Fuentes breathes a sigh of relief. By selecting and recombining the photographs and images, in the process of work, by finally painting these dramatic experiences in bright colours, the scenes lose a bit of their horror.

Ricardo Harris-Fuentes paintings leave a deep impression. They reveal an authentic sympathy for men without making any accusations.

My images are not intended to be ironic or moralizing. They come from a simple humanist desire to represent other human beings negotiating difficult situations in their lives through the language of paint.

RICARDO HARRIS-FUENTES was born in Los Angeles, California in 1976. As a child and young adult, he has lived on both the East and West Coasts of the United States, Latin America and Europe. In 2000 he completed a Bachelors degree in Philosophy at Amherst College. Ricardo Harris-Fuentes spent two years in Italy from 2003-2005. He is currently a student at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago. He has been included in several group exhibitions, as well as a solo show at the New York Studio School.

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