Antonio Dias (1944-2018)

Following his Pop-inspired work of the 1960s, Dias repeatedly and imaginatively reinvented his practice, working within modes of conceptualism and multimedia experimentation that commingled ironic subversion, satire, and art-historical deconstruction. In numerous works from the last three decades of his career, he dismantled the material and visual conventions of painting through the introduction of volatile metallic and mineral elements. Impurities of copper, gold leaf, and malachite combine on the irregular, oxidized surface of the present diptych, physically and metaphorically contaminated by their contact with the world.