BOTANICUM SERIES II
by Amanda Ahmed July 2022
‘In botanical art we can still find the disciplines of art and science expressing their joint concern for the accurate description of the world. This genre of artmaking is a sanctuary in which prose and poetry, truth and beauty, are not mutually exclusive." - Associate Professor Dominic Redfern, RMIT University.
John Pastoriza-Pinol works articulate a delicate balance between natural history and contemporary art practice, it is a commitment to painting as both a method and as a form of deeper inspection.
The Botanicum Series was a project undertaken following the success of Pastoriza-Piñol’s first solo exhibition in London 2006. This series of exhibitions would syncopate a lengthy art career and allow the artist to return to the genesis of his art practice with renewed skill and vision. Unlike the treatise offered to a Florilegium, a collection of plants from a particular garden or place site, the Botanicum Series is typically a collection of intimate studies of plants and natural history with a more contemporary art feel. These would be subjects the artist has an affinity towards or which have captured his attention.
This new body of work reveals a noticeably conscious shift by Pastoriza-Piñol with the composition of the flower/ plant portraits. The meticulous rendering, coupled with the acrobatics of the subject matter, presents a maturation in skill and accentuates the tension between the beauty and perfection of the specimens depicted and their symbolism.