My name is Alfonso, and I am a visual artist whose work revolves around handmade collage. Each piece I create is the result of a manual and deliberate process: cutting, composing, gluing, painting. I strive for the materials—which separately don't say much—to converse with each other to build something new.
Materials as language
My works are built on cardboard, cardstock, and acrylic paint. To this, I add photographic cutouts—images taken from magazines, books, publications, or directly shot by me—which function as fragments of collective memory. In some pieces, acetate also appears, adding transparency and depth, or staples, which reveal the structure, the scaffolding of the work.
I don't hide the process. On the contrary: the materials speak for themselves.
The format
I work mainly in two formats: 15×15 cm and 20×20 cm, always on a 30×30 cm support. These are pieces of contained size, designed to live close to whoever owns them: on a shelf, on a table, hanging on a wall. They are not works that impose; they are works that accompany.
Some come framed with glass, ready to hang. Others are delivered unframed, so that each person can decide how to integrate them into their space.
A recognizable palette
If there's one thing that runs through all my work, it's orange. Not as an aesthetic whim, but as a common thread, as an emotional temperature. It's a color that warms, activates, and doesn't go unnoticed. It appears in different intensities and contexts throughout the series, but it's always there.
Why collage?
Because collage is, in essence, a practice of reuse and re-signification. Taking something that already existed and giving it a new context is, for me, a way of understanding the world. Nothing comes from nothing; everything comes from somewhere.
And because I like to work with my hands. Collage forces me to be present, to make physical decisions, to make mistakes and correct them on paper.