SHILOWSKA PRETTO

Lives and works in San José, Costa Rica

Artist statement

ARTIST STATEMENT I do not create to represent the world. I am not particularly interested in reproducing what is already visible. What interests me is the much more complex visual information that appears when I don’t force what I see into something I already recognize. For decades, my work has developed through a sustained exploration of perception, ambiguity, and the structures that shape human experience. The paintings were never conceived as illustrations of a philosophy. They came first. Only after years of observing the work and the way people responded to it did I notice a pattern. People would recognize something, but they couldn’t quite identify what they were seeing. I could see the struggle while they searched for something familiar and the image wouldn’t give it to them. Often there was real anxiety within that experience. They wanted to know. They needed the image to settle into something they could identify. That reaction became important to me. Why was not knowing so uncomfortable? Why did the image have to resolve at all? The perception was still active. That observation eventually gave rise to Dimensionalism. I began developing the philosophy as a way of understanding what the paintings were already doing. There is also something more personal underneath this investigation. I have spent much of my life questioning categories I did not choose. There are countless ways in which identity arrives already classified: by gender, geography, age, social position,...

Artwork