The Dream after Ribera Painting

Rai Escalé, (born 4 August 1964) is a Catalan painter and visual artist. His work has been shown extensively around Europe and USA, and his illustrations have appeared in many Catalan media. He works between south Catalonia, where he lives now, and Bratislava, where he collaborates since 2007 with Miloš Kopták in the Miroir Noir project. From 2009 to 2014 was deeply involved in the epic burst in and out of the mythical Barcelona Eat Meat Gallery. "I am painter and I mostly paint people. Due to his biological implications human face give the greatest and deepest source of emotions and information to spectator, and being a very simple icon, when representing it lets the artist plenty of space to play with emotions and feelings. I've always been doing portraits In the early years I used to over paint my own paints, but soon that came to be a problem, and had to start looking for 'painted' layers to keep painting. So I started making my own through collage or just painting over photos or printed material glued on a canvas. Since then I permanently seek and find images laying hidden under other images. Random images among the millions that we come across every day. And that (when successfully done), gives all my works this strange sensation of layered reality, with bits of dada, surrealistic or pop sensations inlaid or as constructing parts of each portrait. Transparencies, shaded layers, casual remains of what was behind come to be essential part of the construction of the final portrait, showing behind the paintwork. And i do it through rough paint, ink, nearly no scissors and any computers... But even if not gluing anything, technically they still call it collage...So PAINT-COLLAGE IMAGES is what I do."