Edson Villarreal

You Should Have Seen Me as I First Set Sail brings together the most recent body of paintings by Edson Villarreal. The exhibition presents a collection of portraits of heterogeneous entities and spaces that have fallen into disuse, enveloped in an atmosphere of nostalgia that hovers between failure and abandonment.

Throughout the series, a restrained and muted color palette prevails, with a clear inclination toward ochres, soiled greens, warm grays, and veiled browns, occasionally pierced by heavily desaturated blues or blacks that never become absolute. The only hue that breaks this rule is coral. There are no harsh chromatic contrasts; everything appears filtered through a patina of wear, as if color itself had undergone the same process of erosion as the spaces it depicts.

You should have seen me at my best, when I was something new, when hopes and expectations were placed upon me, when I had a function, when I responded to a need. You should have seen me as I first set sail.

—trapo, galería