Wonder Boy Complex

What has most distinguished the painting of Xavier Coronel (Guayaquil, 1988) is that it resists being defined by a specific and evident framework of interests. His ambition with respect to this is manifested, however, in his determined inclination for large formats, contrary to the progressive domestication of local contemporary painting in the last ten years. Despite the indications that he provides in the titles and in the figurative suggestions, his paintings on a heroic scale allow us to perceive -in certain passages- a formal philia for abstraction, where expressive gestures and a particular way of applying paint that can to evoke the post-war art of the New York School: a commitment to the emotional flashes that texture, color and other plastic resources and ideas can achieve, such as -in his words- “the stain, the bias, the void, the discoloration.” framing, distortion”.