Collection: Illi et Nos _they and us_ Roger Sanguino.

The collection of paintings that make up the exhibition comprises three thematic axes revolving around portraiture: “We Are a Number”, “Portrait and Geometry”, and “Protected Portrait”, taking into account approaches such as identity, urban space, relationships with others, and time. The characters portrayed in the works that make up the exhibition arise from my observations and notes of the urban space I traverse daily, from which I also consider the existing geometry, which is also present in the space we inhabit. As we move within the urban space, interacting or socializing with others, we encounter resources or mechanisms as ways to approach the identity of others, to recognize them, to recognize ourselves, to identify them or identify ourselves.

We can all be them, and they can be us, because we are all part of this urban environment, where we observe others and where we are observed. On the previously painted portraits, I incorporate different steel resources with which I reinforce their formalization. These steel solutions (a kind of three-dimensional drawing) appear subordinated or floating and complementing the pictorial surface. But steel also fulfills another function; it ends up shaping each work the moment the characteristic light glint of this material appears, a luminous effect that moves as we shift from one end to the other while contemplating the image. The mixture of different technical procedures results in an image that is halfway between painting and sculpture, both disciplines coexisting on the same surface.

Protected Portrait.

The 2020 pandemic brought with it a change in our lives, generating forced isolation where socializing with others was reduced exclusively to the people closest to us. Once confinement measures were relaxed, we emerged into the urban space with restricted and distanced contact with others. Then, a device takes center stage: the mask, a resource that served to protect us, but also altered everyone's identity.

Amidst the confinement, and immersed in that constant search in my work, I began to explore the possibilities of steel, such as meshes, which at a certain point I incorporated onto the image. In that process, chance played a decisive role. By placing the mesh over the portrait, the identity of the reference character was modified, altered. The mesh provided an unexpected solution, leading to an altered identity and a new line of work within the research.

Some portraits that make up this thematic axis are suspended in space and rotating on their own axis. In each structure that supports these portraits, we see two representations of the same character, connected by their back and directing their gazes towards opposite ends. Like the god Janus in Roman culture, who appears, for example, in classical sculpture with a double face of himself, one looking to the past, and the other to the future. In that representation of the god Janus, I find a parallel with ourselves, who constantly look from the present to the past and the future.

Portrait and Geometry.

“Geometry is present throughout nature, in the structure of all things, in every atom, molecule and every galaxy, but it also lives within us.” Since ancient times, great civilizations combined the principles of geometry with specific numbers and proportions to create their vision of the world, build buildings and monuments, and replicate the patterns of nature. It is said that every natural pattern of growth or movement can be traced back to one or more geometric shapes, which, moreover, due to the characteristics of the laws that govern the universe, are fractals. Understanding how fractals work takes on greater meaning when we associate them with the well-known hermetic law: “As above, so below, and as within, so without.” A fractal explains macro and micro as "an indivisible whole in the universe."

The relationship between numerology and sacred geometry lies in the idea that numbers and geometric shapes possess symbolic and energetic meanings, and are inseparable. It is not known whether mathematics or geometry came first; what is understood is that one does not exist without the other. The portraits that make up this thematic axis appear surrounded or enveloped in geometric structures or forms. Every form that floats or we see anchored on these portraits are thoughts, or representations of that infinite set of vertical lines, horizontal lines, angles, circles, curves, etc., all the basic shapes surrounding us wherever we are. Without realizing it, we live with fractals of sacred geometry all the time.

We Are a Number.

Numbers, such simple elements that appeared in shepherds' bags thirty thousand years ago to help them count sheep, have become over time the hallmark of human identity. Numbers came to replace our identity, determining our existence. Their inventors are not to blame for such usurpation, because the Sumerians and Babylonians ignored the consequences of what they were doing when they stammered out the numerical alphabet that has supplanted our names.

Neither body, nor soul, nor essence, nor reason. We are simply numbers. The system is responsible for enumerating our footwear, clothing, house, car, our grave. At birth, we are assigned the first number, a different one in the documentation that certifies our birth. In school, we are given another, but especially, we are assigned a number as Citizens, another as taxpayers, and another as workers. Bank account numbers, telematics bases, financial and commercial cards, postal and telephone districts. Access codes to financial controls, emails, etc. Our name is a decorative complement that adorns the number that identifies us.

In the tax office, at the police station, in the hospital, the library, at the border, in commerce, the supermarket, in all these cases, they will always ask us for an already assigned number. It's just that in queues, we have been many numbers. The countless numbers assigned to us throughout our lives remain in our memory. Nowadays, numbers no longer appear alone; now we find them accompanied by symbols brought by modernity: barcodes, created in 1948 by Bernard Silver and Norman Woodland, students at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Later, QR codes appeared as an evolution of barcodes, created in Japan by Masahiro Hara in 1994. We use QR codes to share passwords, get contact information, view a restaurant's menu, pay, access a website, view images, and much more. QR codes have been standardized for years and have been excellently received due to their ease of use. In their 'boom' after the pandemic, many businesses decided to replace paper with this module that stores information. Both barcodes and QR codes are part of our corporate identity; they are a key piece in identification, logistics, and traceability.

If we think of each card we carry in our wallet, or the documentation we currently receive, we will find these two modern ways of condensing information and as identification resources. The portraits in this thematic axis bear examples of these already famous codes. Two of the portraits representing the creators of barcodes carry the same code in the form of rings of different diameters along with a numbering.

This was the first barcode designed by Silver and Woodland, and it is the precursor to the famous bars. The father of QR codes is also portrayed wearing a QR code that safeguards his name. The rest of the portraits are intervened with barcodes, at the foot of which we read their meaning. And a QR portrait that reaffirms that "We Are a Number."