A donkey half-materializes from a gestural maelstrom: two phosphorescent yellow eyes glow inside a black mass fractured by red drips that read like open wounds, layered with slate-gray veils. At the right edge, thick vertical strokes of cobalt blue and cadmium yellow fall like stakes or crosses fencing the animal; a second ultramarine cross pierces the lower left. Impasto knives and gravity-pulled splashes turn the surface into a battlefield where color and matter collide. The donkey, symbol of stubborn labor and sacrifice, appears trapped between signs of social or religious strife, yet raw canvas left exposed breathes a fragile pause. The work oscillates between figuration and abstraction, exposing violence against humble bodies while the persistent yellow gaze hints at an irreducible will to endure.
Ian Mont (Puerto Padre, Cuba, 1972) trained first in Cuban painting workshops and later in photography at Havana’s Instituto Superior de Arte (2001-06), exhibiting widely in Cuba while experimenting with conceptual and video art. A 2006 Fundación Carolina grant took him to Spain, where exile led to the loss of much early work and a decade-long hiatus from painting.
Reemerging in 2018, Mont forged a matter-based practice on burlap and raw canvas that blends abstract and neo-expressionist impulses—echoes of Basquiat, de Kooning, and Antonia Eiriz—with industrial textures and visceral symbolism. Now based in Barcelona, he turns exile, political rupture, and the desacralization of icons into a fiercely poetic visual language of confrontation.