Gary
Pico

Every sheet of paper, fragment of wood, pigment and recovered object carries traces of a life before entering the studio. My work welcomes those traces, transforms them and gives them a new presence.

At the meeting point of painting, sculpture and assemblage, I build each work in layers of recycled paper, wood resin, pigments and found objects. Matter resists and changes; its accidents become part of the work, alongside my own gesture.

Objects embedded in the surface — an earring, a cigar form made from pen fragments, a piece of paper — carry memories that the work prolongs. Relief gives these presences a physical form: faces and bodies emerge from the canvas, while the gaze creates a direct, sometimes unsettling relation with the viewer.

With Living Memories, I explore what remains as time transforms things: fragments, sensations and the attachments we place in objects. The work moves from an introspection centred on the figure towards an extrospection that opens onto landscape, sea and horizon. The outer world becomes an extension of the inner one.

My works do not recount memories literally. They bring to the surface what memory leaves within us: a sensation, a light, a texture or an emotion that words cannot always express.