“I fell in love with it, the painting behavior of using watercolors on paper, the bloody flow, the reaction of the paper, the lush beauty of the brush, the speed of the medium and the seductiveness I found.”
His unusual works tend to disobey the laws of time and space. These images follow hypnotic logic, given their murmurs from random memories. Separate, but tangible enough to distinguish the setting. We may have a sense of foreground, but in addition to that bland detail, it allows details to fill the gaps in memory, whatever they wish – banjos wanders in the air, monkeys climb up invisible obstacles, while paintings hang on non-existent walls. From this chaos, a satisfactory performance emerged. He explained: “The whole process is similar to a dance choreographed, or like performing a piece of music from a composition. All the performances are in the early stages of sketching and composing. In that freshman stage, I would try dozens of different things. But once it was choreographed, but once it was choreographed step by step, it could be performed in time, and there you just have to be in pressive of. There is no scratch, so you have to have pure concentration and belief, which puts you into some otherworldly mind space, like making a mandala from the sand.
In contrast, Palladino’s bedroom scenes are his unique plant portraits, which have a sharp texture but are soft and dreamy at the same time, all with his unique psychological style. These paintings of the noble cactus family, their fleshy folds and hallucinated splendor. Palladino and his wife have lived in La Paz for the past five years. Part of the Andes and the world’s highest capital city are among the cactus and succulents that thrive there. San Pedro plants (native to the Andes) gradually reproduce through “walls”, a response to mutations, infections, or damages that produce brain-like growth patterns. The plant has become the muse of Palladino. In this weird and fascinating growth story, he shares, “I started playing with ‘growing’ or design, my own version, and they started to have an almost spiritual feeling like meeting an ancient forgotten god, an ancient and wise mystery. Then, of course, there is the surroundings of this place, which is the place, the arid mountains and the sky, which seems to be a very dramatic factory, and close to you is another frame, which is another frame.
Palladino’s creativity did not end, as many of his ideas entered the relief of the tactile wall through resin or hand-painted 3-D printed films, entering the realm of matter. These may include elements similarly found in his paintings, such as interesting felines, rainbow ribbons and candy-like floral scents.
Asked about his fascinating places that might land next, he said: “I hope to explore paintings with dyes on dyes this year. Since my partner is an expert in textiles, we may have some collaboration. I also hope to revisit the 3-D wall reliefs that I do a lot of work in order to stay alert.”
Regardless of the medium, his passion for the quirks of his life emerges to us, full of cooperative eyes.
This article originally appeared in Hi-Fructose Issue 74. You can still get a copy of it here. Or subscribe to our latest issue here today.
