This vibrant new show captures the dynamism of the male form

Carlos Bellido Flores doesn’t want to tell you what his paintings mean. Like the rest of his work, his new solo show, Studies of the Figure, which opens at 81 Goldsmiths Row in London this weekend, is ambiguous by design. “I want it to be open to interpretation. I’m not trying to preach about anything or force any particular theme,” he tells Dazed. Defined by bold colours and thick brush-strokes, these works are figurative but not realist or literal, and the effect they produce is often dream-like. Each painting is a moment frozen in time; a scene ripped out from a larger story, their subjects divorced from a context at which the viewer can only guess.

Some of Flores’s subjects are people he knows: “The Dancer” is based on photographs he took of a friend – a ballet dancer – who posed for him at the Royal Opera House; “Portrait of Sandro Tsikoridze” depicts Tsikoridze, a composer, with an orange blanket draped around his body. Others are drawn from memories, fleeting encounters, and strangers passed by on the street. “Three Figures and Game” is inspired by a group of men Flores saw playing football on a beach, but this wouldn’t be apparent at first glance: set against a stark backdrop, stripped of both signifiers and clothing, they could be dancing, flying through the air or practicing some arcane ritual.

Flores, who moved to London from southern Spain at the age of 18, first completed an undergraduate degree at London College of Communication, where his studies were more focused on mixed media. It wasn’t until he began an MA at the RCA that he embraced figurative painting. Since then, he has developed a distinct and striking visual style, which makes particular use of layered brush-strokes (a technique known as impasto). “I’ve always been drawn to texture,” he explains. “Oil paint, the medium I use the most, doesn’t evaporate; it oxidises, so it’s kind of a hands-on thing to look at.” By layering his paintings in such a noticeable way, he hopes to make visible the process behind them and show the viewer the “guts” of what he’s trying to do. 

Cinema has always been the most significant influence on his artistic practice, and particularly the films of John Cassavates, Paulo Pasolinio, Robert Bresson, Andrei Tarvosky and Pedro Almodovar (“because I’m from Spain, Almodovar was one of the first directors I watched as teenager and thought, this is art”, he says). He admires these filmmakers for their patience and subtlety, their lack of didacticism and interest in the mundane. “In the case of Cassavetes or Pasolinio, their films are very long and there is a lot of waiting around, there’s a lot of suspension of time and space and they’re not trying to force any particular scene. In Cassavete’s Opening Night, the main character is lost. She goes through a very emotional experience, and in some of the scenes the camera is so close to her that it feels like you’re with her in that empty room where she's struggling, or sometimes getting drunk or having fun,” he says.

Flores’s paintings have an alluring, sensual quality and many of them are centred on the male nude, but they’re not intended to be erotic as such (personally, though, I think they’re pretty sexy.) “I’m a gay man and I’m used to the male body, which has always been my sexual life. But whatever sexual tension exists between these figures is not direct,” he says, adding that he wouldn’t rule out depicting sex scenes in the future. For now, he is more interested in atmosphere and mood. “As with the films I like, a sex scene doesn’t have to show you the moment itself – it could be conveyed just as intensely by showing you close-ups of faces, the energy or the sound,” he says. “Story on Orange Background” shows two men crossing paths, perhaps parting ways at the end of an encounter, but what that encounter might have involved is left to the imagination.

Figurative painting has been booming in popularity for years now, which Flores suggests may just be the result of cyclical trends. “Artists are always looking for something new,” he says. “There was a period in which there were a lot of abstract or landscape paintings, and also a period when people thought painting was over, and it became secondary to performance art and things like that. I do think it’s making a comeback now.” But even if it falls out of favour once again, he’s sticking with his chosen medium: “I think when people are painters, they will always have that deep inside them.”