User:Manuel1667

Born in (1957 Manuel Gongora came into the US from his native Cuba very young, when he was 12 years old. Since an early age he had a different vision of the world. Rebellious against everything he did not like, what was many things other children accepted as part of their learning process, he grew up in the heart of an exile community.  Perhaps that sense of belonging to a different universe made him feel he did not belong anywhere. When he biologically matured, that division created an inner chaos. That acted like a colored glass, through which he saw a world he could not completely understand. To this day he has not been able to get that much needed understanding of the world, and as an artist, he expresses that in a very personal style.

His life, like his works is like an ever changing rollercoaster leading him to the extremes. From the heights of his personal heavens, to the pits of his personal hell. Few middle grounds. Everything or nothing. That is the story of his life.

How can we define his works of art, his paintings? An ever present chaos, but refined and distilled over the years. He was a prince and a beggar, he has fell to the lowest levels a human being can fell, trying to escape from a never understood, always merciless reality. That is what his works reflect. An ever changing standpoint, an ever changing approach to the outer world, his paintings clung to that like a glove. Using different media, mastering ochers as a weapon thrown to the face of life, that period makes us remember the somber years of some masters from the past, not in style but as in intent.

Little by little that chaotic style was evolving into a more organized chaos, so to speak, and a vague metaphysical or mythological blow began to transform his style. He used the canvas like a paper onto which to write, like a blasphemy, his inconformity with existence. Cloaked in a non-logical universe, normal logic is beyond his capabilities. Do not ask him for ideas, but for feelings. Do not ask him for permanence but for instability. Then do not ask him for logic either, he is not interested in that.

Like all the controversial real artists of all times, you have no options when it comes to him, or his work. Like it or hate it. And likewise, like him or hate him.