HELLO IRVING, GREAT TO HAVE YOU ON 4BYSIX’S VEHICLES FOR CHANGE INITIATIVE AND SPEAKING TO YOU ABOUT YOUR ARTISTIC PRACTICE. 

STARTING WITH WORK BRINGING TOGETHER TRAGEDY, CONFLICT, TRAINING, ENTERTAINMENT, AND HISTORICAL IMAGERY INTO A SINGLE COMPLEX VISUAL ARENA, COULD YOU SHARE WHAT INITIALLY LED YOU TO EXPLORE THESE THEMES?

HOW YOUR EARLY ARTISTIC INTENTIONS SHAPED THE CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATION OF YOUR PRACTICE TODAY.

A significant shift in my practice happened when I moved from Ecuador to Europe four years ago. In many ways, that move was necessary. My work was asking for other depths, other questions, and I felt that by moving physically, by placing myself in another kind of tension, something would move as well in the work and in the state of uncertainty.

The migration process itself became a defining experience. What I initially imagined as a straightforward relocation turned into more than a year of instability, shaped by visa restrictions, bureaucratic obstacles, and the constant uncertainty of where I was allowed to be and where I was not. Carrying a document that determines where you are welcomed and where you are excluded made me reflect deeply on questions of displacement, power, belonging, and the historical structures that continue to regulate movement and access.

Although my own experience came from a relatively privileged position compared to many others, it opened a profound curiosity about these systems and their lasting consequences. From that point onward, I became increasingly interested in working with symbolic elements drawn from the history of representation, particularly images associated with power, heroism, conquest, and authority. By revisiting and transforming these inherited visual structures, I try to question the narratives they carry and explore how they continue to shape our collective imagination and are becoming even more visible in the current situation of the world.

Looking back, however, I can see that some of these concerns were already present much earlier. I grew up in an air force environment, as my father was in the military. From a young age, I was surrounded by aircraft and military machinery. What fascinated me was the contradiction they embodied: they were machines designed for violence, yet they also possessed a striking formal beauty and carried an almost heroic aura.

I remember drawing over aircraft instruction manuals when I was a child, intervening directly on technical drawings of planes. I would extend them with elements of imagination and fantasy, turning them into other kinds of beings, more fantastic or more heroic machines. Much later, as an adult, I understood that this had definitely marked my interest in these themes: machines, violence, heroism, fantasy, power, and the way all of these things can exist together in one image.

IRVING RAMÓ, YOUR WORK OFTEN ENGAGES WITH HISTORICAL IMAGERY AND LAYERED SYMBOLIC TENSIONS. HOW DO YOU APPROACH CHOOSING YOUR COLOUR PALETTE IN RELATION TO HISTORICAL REFERENCES AND THE THEMES YOU EXPLORE?

For me, the colour palette operates as a catalyzer between the viewer and the work, since the images that I normally work with can carry a very intense tension, as you mentioned, and can sometimes be hard to digest.

The use of a desaturated palette that also carries this classical nostalgia, even when juxtaposed with direct moments of saturated focal points, creates for me this friction that I'm very much interested in approaching.

So, in this case, it works as a mediator. It becomes a character that helps gently introduce the viewer to the image and allows them to start a conversation, to start a dialogue with it. Otherwise, the image itself can already be hard enough, or intense enough, to invite the viewer's gaze into the work. It creates an entry point, a space where the viewer can approach the image before confronting the tensions that exist within it. And of course, I want them immersed.

DO YOU USE COLOUR TO ECHO SPECIFIC PERIODS, TO CREATE CONTRAST WITH THEM, OR TO REINTERPRET HISTORY THROUGH A RECONTEXTUALISED CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVE?

Well, since my work, as we have talked about before, contains many historical references, especially from the Renaissance and the Baroque period, the palette is definitely connected to colours that intentionally reference the past.

One of my interests is to make it noticeable that the images I decide to produce, whether they are epiphanic battles, equestrian portraits, dramatic contexts, or historical and biblical scenes may belong to a different time, but they are also situations that continue to exist today. They happened during cave times, they happened during the Renaissance, they happened during the Baroque period, and they happen now.

Because of that, the palette of my work carries traces and flavours of traditional and classical painting. It is important for me that those references remain present because they are part of the lineage from which these images emerge.

On the other hand, there are definitely other flavours on the table that suggest a contemporary view of those themes. One of my interests is to visualize, or perhaps remind us, that these acts and situations have never really disappeared. They insist on existing as something primitive within human nature.

HOW DO YOU APPROACH COMPOSITION WHEN CONSTRUCTING SUCH WORKS? DO YOU BEGIN WITH THE SYMBOLIC NARRATIVE, THE SPATIAL ARRANGEMENT OF FIGURES, OR THE EMOTIONAL ATMOSPHERE YOU WANT THE VIEWER TO FEEL?

 I think it definitely begins with a symbolic narrative. There is usually an idea, an intention, or a symbolic situation that I want to explore.

Then there is a big part of the process where an avalanche of sketches starts to come out. Drawings keep appearing, and through them the composition slowly starts to exist. At some point there is also a digital process, and then the work comes back again into drawing. Through this back-and-forth between drawing and the digital process, the image starts to find its form.

At the end, all this mass of bodies and movement starts to merge and combine and approach the viewer. I am very interested in the edges of the work because, for me, the image is not necessarily contained within the square. It has a continuation. It allows the viewer to imagine that something is still going on beyond what is visible.

When two bodies collide, there is an expansion that happens. Very often, parts of the image are cut by the frame, and that is extremely important to me compositionally. First, because it opens the image rather than closes it. Second, because it creates a tension of rupture within the image itself.

In a way, I also see it as a historical rupture. The image is not completely defined; it is still in the process of becoming. There is still a possibility to reconstruct these imaginaries, especially when dealing with histories of power, colonization, migration, and the structures that continue to shape them.

YOU RECENTLY MADE A NEW PIECE ON A PIECE OF DISCONTINUED LORRY TARPAULIN. HOW DO YOU GENERALLY APPROACH MATERIALITY IN YOUR PRACTICE AND DID YOU SEE THE TARPAULIN AS A CARRIER OF MEMORY OR AS AN ACTIVE PARTICIPANT THAT GENERATES THE EMOTIONAL AND SYMBOLIC LANGUAGE OF YOUR WORK?

In general, my work already reuses historical images and works through them. I constantly return to images that already exist, images that already carry a history, and I transform them into something else. So working with recycled materials feels connected to that same process. There is a conversation between the recycling of images and the recycling of matter.

I have become increasingly interested in new materialities. In fact, many of the works I am currently developing for upcoming exhibitions are moving further in that direction.

This interest appears through more volumetric elements, through extensions that emerge from the paintings, almost like prosthetics that extend from the frame. There are pointed elements that appear around the work and continue beyond the surface of the canvas.

THINKING ABOUT 4BYSIX’S AMBITION TO PROMOTE SUSTAINABILITY WITHIN THE VISUAL ARTS AND YOUR PERSPECTIVE ON URBAN LIFE IN BERLIN, HOW DO YOU REFLECT THE ATMOSPHERE OF CITIES, PEOPLE’S DENSITY, MOVEMENT, AND HUMAN ECOLOGY IN YOUR ARTISTIC VISION?

I think Germany in general, and Berlin in particular, have developed a very powerful system around sustainability and recycling. Because of that, an entire ecosystem has grown around it, including artistic practices that are able to work with materials and structures that already exist within that system.

I have seen many powerful artistic projects emerge from that context, and I find that very inspiring.

Berlin itself feels like a city that emerged through a process of historical recycling. It is a city that had to reinvent itself after the Wall and that carries a strong awareness of transformation, reconstruction, and reuse.

In that sense, I feel that the idea of reuse extends beyond materials. It also exists in the way histories, spaces, and ideas are constantly being re-examined and transformed.

WHEN DEVELOPING YOUR IMAGES AND CONCEPTS, DO YOU ALSO REFLECT ON THE CONDITION OF THE EARTH’S ENVIRONMENT? IF SO, DO ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS APPEAR DIRECTLY IN YOUR VISUAL LANGUAGE, OR DO THEY INFLUENCE YOUR WORK MORE AS AN UNDERLYING ATMOSPHERE OR PHILOSOPHICAL TENSION?

I do not think environmental concerns directly appear in my work or within the imagery itself.

However, as an individual, I try to maintain as much awareness as possible regarding environmental issues, recycling, and the reuse of materials and objects in everyday life. In some ways, that awareness also finds its way into certain aspects of how the studio operates and how materials are approached.

So I would say that it can be reflected there. But in direct response to the question, it remains more within a personal territory than a central subject within the work itself.

FINALLY, AFTER EXPLORING CYCLICAL POWER STRUCTURES AND THE MYTHIC SPECTACLE OF HEROISM IN WORKS LIKE EQUESTRIAN CAROUSEL, WHAT DIRECTIONS ARE YOU CONSIDERING FOR YOUR NEXT PROJECTS? ARE YOU CONTINUING TO EXPAND THIS RITUALISTIC, HISTORICAL DIALOGUE, OR MOVING TOWARD NEW THEMES, MATERIALS, OR SPACES OF PRESENTATION?

Well, looking at the projects ahead, I feel there is definitely a strong curiosity coming from the work itself towards the sculptural.

We have already talked about it through these extensions that emerge from the frames, but also through the possibility of creating site-specific works or painterly installations that involve a more direct interaction with the public. That is something that interests me a lot and something I want to continue developing. There are several upcoming projects moving in that direction.

At the same time, there is also a growing curiosity about sculpture itself, about the voluptuousness of bodies, and how that can materialize beyond painting. For a long time, I have been interested in seeing how these concerns might translate into a sculptural practice, and that is something I will continue exploring during this year.

There is also a much stronger and more focused interest in researching historical narratives through documents and records from the period of the conquest of the Americas. I am interested in understanding how those materials can be incorporated more precisely into the images I am producing.

I feel that this is slowly closing a circle of research while opening another one, and I am very curious to see where it leads.