Andrés Gallego is fascinated by the work of the 20th-century American painter Edward Hopper, who found support in the spatial structures he photographed. Gallego’s ‘Hopper Essence’ series is a series of photographs in which the views from the windows are transferred to canvas by the artist himself in acrylic paint, as is the scenography, which is reproduced to scale. His wife is depicted in it, just as Hopper depicted his Jo.
Painter Edward Hopper photographed architectural details and spaces for a while and then used the images to support the development of his work, but he abandoned this procedure, convinced that the photographs were very different from the perspective of the human eye. Perhaps he thought that it is impossible to represent what we see with our eyes through a lens, or that his own internal vision is more important, i.e. subjective perception. One can see photography as an ephemeral event and the nature of painting as a process.
In the same vein as Hopper's painting, Gallego's photography makes you hesitate about what you see.