ALFONSO DEL MORAL

Back to art, the kind that is full of energy and eroticism. Enjoy this delightful selection courtesy of Spanish artist Alfonso del Moral. Not to be gossipy, but you’ll be seeing more of Alfonso’s work here on Pineapple, but that’s music for the future.

Alfonso del Moral was born in Murcia, Spain, in 1992. He studied a Law Degree and a Masters in Law. Yet, his sensibility towards art led him to leave his career and start a Fine Arts Degree in Valencia, which he finished in 2021. He is currently studying a Fine Arts Masters at the Universitat Politècnica de València.

Alfonso conceives art as a constant question about himself and the world. A space for research of his own identity. As a matter of fact, the concept of identity is what he has been working on for the last years. And not only from the visual arts, he dances queer tango and he organizes a queer tango festival in Valencia. Alfonso’s eclectic formation, both cognitive and physical, has probably helped him complete his particular vision of identity: a performative, changing, incoherent, external and visual construction inscribed on the body. Obviously, identity is closely related to desire. Maybe our desires define our identity; or maybe, when we assume an identity, we assume with it the inherent desires of that identity. In any case, with his Just Some Fantasies project, Alfonso studies sexual drives in the online gay community.

The paintings produced show nudity, erotic scenes and explicit images of sex, and are made from photographs sent in by Instagram users to an ad hoc account. These photographs speak of their fantasies and the sexual practices they like. In this way, it is the users themselves who decide what is worth painting, how it is to be painted and the body types shown, with no discrimination.

As a result, the series is made up of various heterogeneous images which follow a theme that is not in line with academic tradition, yet still uses traditional pictorial language and a common discourse, creating a visual paradox reinforced by the fact that most of the images are painted on the underside of Law diplomas, remarking the constant tension between tradition and innovation; between the duty and the appetency; between norms, conventions and morals on the one hand, and conflict, crime and desire on the other. All this also leads to the creation of a public space for debate and criticism of the hegemonic concept of desire in the connected multitude.
The project was exhibited in Madrid in 2021 at Arniches 26 gallery, where he will be exhibiting another project related to identity through pictorial portrait next April.