CTRL+Paint - at Rhodes Contemporary

In CTRL+Paint, Spanish artist Lino Lago further interrogates the tension between classical tradition and digital-age visual culture, creating works that are as conceptually sharp as they are visually arresting. His latest series features meticulously rendered Old Master-style portraits, eerily lifelike in their precision, interrupted by bold, digitally inspired gestures that slash across the canvas like algorithmic brushstrokes. These jarring yet deliberate interventions, reminiscent of glitches, swipe commands, or Photoshop masks, serve as a metaphor for the fragmented way we consume images today.

The introduction of gold leaf adds a provocative duality: it nods to medieval religious iconography while simultaneously evoking the gilded excess of modern luxury brands. Here, gold neither purely sanctifies nor decorates, it obscures, challenging the viewer to decode layers of meaning beneath.

Lago’s saturated color fields, flat and graphic against the tonal subtlety of his figurative work, heighten this clash of eras. The effect is both disruptive and harmonious, mirroring our own paradoxical relationship with art in an age of infinite scrolling and disposable imagery.

Having exhibited widely across Europe and the US, Lago solidifies his position as a pivotal voice in contemporary painting with this third solo show at RHODES. CTRL+Paint doesn’t just question how we see, it asks what we fail to see when the virtual and the visceral collide.

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