Layering Emotions: Pepo Moreno

With accrossages of naïf, somewhat bedroom drawings, annotations and memos, Pepo Moreno builds mood boards of possible worlds, assembling memory and ideal. After a successful past in the fashion industry, the Catalan artist reclaims his need for creative expression, exacerbated by the stagnation of the covid emergency, experienced in the captivity of a Parisian apartment, which has become for him an atelier and shelter. «During the pandemic I was bored to death, I started painting nonstop. The practice became, day after day, an integral part of my routine». From an imposed domesticity Moreno re-emerged in a random motion of improvisation, making hundreds of compositions, where emoticons and melting figures become true witnesses of those frailties, which undoubtedly unite each of us. He confesses to me: «At one point I realized that I had wallpapered my room with paintings...I had no more space! Art helped me openly express my anxieties in a moment of stalemate». In 2021, the painter repurposed the intimacy of his bedroom in the spaces of Galerie Charraudeau, transposing his so-personal story-telling into a public space, a laboratory of introspection and catharsis. Pepo Moreno tried to filter those difficult moments through the lens of humor, making something meaningful for himself, in front of which he could stand and reflect.

«I'm inspired by so many things, from a children's book to old Play Girl features-anything that resonates with who I am». Irony and provocation are at the heart of his universe of harmless characters and hunky Betty Boop- esque doodles in perpetual dialogue with cutouts of 1970s gay porn idols. This procession of pleasing demons, weeping flowers and black-and-white adons leads us to an alternative LGBTQ+ cross-section, less eroticized or aestheticizing, perhaps more influenced by Tumblr culture. Moreno evokes in color the very first doubts and pre-adolescent issues, insults and nicknames, which today, in his early thirties, he reduces to inoffensive two-dimensional signs. «It is a continuous work on oneself. As a child I didn't fully understand what those words meant. You feel insulted by something about your orientation. When you're eight years old you find yourself thinking about issues that are not yet on the table ... today I think these messages still help me question myself, they are self-provocative». Just open his Instagram page to let a smile and maybe even a laugh escape us, at the contemporary graphic messages, left almost like post-it notes to remind us of something, such as Aliens, it's time to take over. Thanks. or BLOWJOBS ARE REAL JOBS, whose t-shirt, sorry for you, is already sold out. A humour that becomes an effective and healthy means of identity propaganda, not by chance one of his graphics has been used by Jacquemus for a project in favour of Urgence Homophobie association.

«It fascinates me how fashion always manages to be a sincere dimension through which to express oneself... I borrow the brazenness of that world, of glossy paper, to create superimpositions in which to project my emotionality». Three years after his radical change of perspective, Pepo Moreno's works allow us to understand that very often abandoning certainties can open up wide new horizons, and if everything seems to be falling apart. «Do not worry! Everything's gonna be alright, darling!»