The end of the world doesn’t seem so bad presented through Raffael Antonio Iglesias’ most recent body of work Apokalypticious. In fact, the organized chaos is startlingly beautiful. Layers of vibrant colors, varied and repeated patterns and pop-culture icons are resurrected and intermingled to create a visual cacophony that denies any single reading and fixed meaning. Often defined through contradictions, Iglesias’s work has been described separately as masculine and feminine, systematic and random. Iglesias prefers to remain ambiguous refusing to confirm or deny either faction in favor of embracing the potential for both. A hybrid state is reached where a fluid reading is necessary to understand the cultural amalgamation. Like jazz or hip-hop, harmony is reached through the re-sampling of disparate rhythms, as through the merging of high and low imagery Iglesias is able to transcend the value trappings of both, and engage in a more fundamental level of shared experience.

Varying from flames to fig leaves and airplanes to stars, sy

mbols are juxtaposed according to an intuitive logic that references unconscious poetry. Traditional painting, stencils, airbrushing, and stickers are layered into a complex tapestry guarded under a slick high-gloss lacquer. Each work is so rich with individual elements mixed and recombined that possible interpretations correspond to the number of times the work is viewed, matching and reflecting the complexity of each viewer’s own lived experience. Although many of the discrete components are highly politicized, the overall meaning of the multiple messages is the underlying universality of the human experience.

The images that Iglesias employs are chosen from his cultural background, from luchadores to cartoons, television, and Victoria’s Secret catalogues. The chosen elements are organized through the metaphor of rapture according to the compositional structure of canonical western art. Selected instinctively, the component parts are organized to evoke the maximum affectual response. Regardless of viewers’ varied sociopolitical circumstances, there are essential qualities and reactions common to all individuals displayed in Iglesias’ beautiful chaos.

Jennifer Johnson
MFA from ACAD Alberta College of Art and Design in Media Arts and Digital Technologies,
currently undergoing Master's in Communication and Culture at York and Ryerson Universities.