IT'S JUST A TRICK: THE REAL AND THE DECEPTIVE

Juan Carlos del Valle has obsessively worked on the problem of illusion and reality. What is truly real? For Juan Carlos, nothing is usually what it seems, because reality is a complex and illusory construction and our perception of it is hopelessly skewed. Juan Carlos questions the viewer about the vague boundaries between that which is revealed and what is hidden, between truth and lies. In the self-portrait Me, Incognito the artist confronts us with a half-covered face: is the mask covering something or revealing it? An appetizing chocolate bar gives us a peak of its creamy filling asking us directly: what's inside? For Cinderella in Back to Reality, the illusion has already faded into mice and pumpkins. And the sparkle that resembles a shooting star at first glance in Another Kind of Light suggests through its title that this is not the light we initially thought, but a different, misleading light.