Jose Luis Carranza

(b. 1981, Lima, Peru) Jose Luis Carranza works long and strict hours, with work days varying from 2 to 16 hours, depending on the intensity required to fulfil the instinctive need that drives his practice. He completed his artistic studies during a time where it was believed that an artist should ‘justify’ his ideas, which he now seeks to destroy with his work. He does not enjoy painting, nor takes pleasure in it, but the need to control his anguish through the creative process is greater than the burden painting causes him. The artist works spontaneously, evoking memories of his childhood and early contact with life experiences. Despite the strong surreal imagery of his work, Carranza doesn’t aim at creating an imaginary world, in his own words, he describes it as: “I don’t escape reality, on the contrary, I move parallel to it”. Carranza has had over a dozen of individual exhibitions, most recently “Historia Natural” in 2017 and “La celebración de las cenizas” in 2019 at Enlace Art Gallery, Lima, Peru.