In memory of Randy Walz, who is so present in this project.
With all the range of available treatments for depression, we could ask ourselves, why the fuck is depression-related disability on the rise?
– Robert Whitaker
What you see is what you see.
– Frank Stella
I have a small collection of medicine packaging that reminds me of the work of some American artists from the last century. Particularly those who are considered part of the Color Field Painting movement. My collection began one day when I saw a box of antidepressants on my dad’s nightstand and thought: that illustration looks like an Ellsworth Kelly. From that moment a question arose with which I decided to speculate for the realization of this project: if the global legitimation of the psychopharmacological industry occurred at the same time as the international boom of artistic practices in the United States, would it then be unreasonable to think that there is any relationship between the graphic design used by pharmaceutical companies and the work of artists such as Agnes Martin, Josef Albers or Sol Lewitt?
Painting and Pharma is a series of paintings with ground medications (antidepressants, anxiolytics and antipsychotics) in which I associate drugs usually prescribed to treat mental health illnesses with works by artists of the Color Field Painting movement. Each work reproduced here, using mixtures of acrylic paint and crushed tablets, was originally made by its author the same year that the brand of medicine that I have superimposed on it came onto the market.
Undoubtedly, the triumph of psychopharmacology in contemporary society is intimately linked to a culture of overproduction, hyperconsumption and anesthesia. We live under the imposed premise that dictates that a healthy body is equal to a productive subject, and that if we cannot adhere to that standard there will always be a pill that we can ingest to solve it. In this sense, to me, Painting and Pharma, my first solo exhibition in LLANO, is a speculative exercise which, based on curiosity or even the fortuitous, explores the overwhelming presence of these drugs in our lives. This is an exhibition of paintings with drugs that is not about painting, neither about drugs. God bless Western culture.
Text: Enrique López Llamas
