Domingo Laya (1981) is a Venezuelan artist based in Chile, who obtained a degree in Visual Arts, specialized in Painting, in 2005, at the Instituto Universitario de Estudios Superiores Armando Reverón, in Caracas.

In his artistic work we notice the configuration of the grotesque as an aesthetic category, whose essential features include the deformity, the terrible, the tragic and the gloomy. It is evident that for Laya the classical notion of beauty is not useful for his intention or need for expression and visual communication; through it he cannot express what he wants, or he cannot express himself as he wants. His work is outlined rather in the grotesque, but from a very personal perspective, which has allowed him to build his own style.

It is opportune to quote Victor Hugo, who in his Prologue to Cromwel (1827), states that “the grotesque (…) on the one hand, creates the deformed and the horrible; on the other, the comic and the comical”. Well, for him “the beautiful has only one type, the ugly has thousands.” That is to say, that the ugly, the grotesque, is one and multiple. The grotesque is a problem of real existence, which manifests itself in all areas of human existence, both collective and individual, and becomes an aesthetic category after the visual artist becomes aware of that situation; then it undergoes metamorphosis, as in the case of Laya, who tells us: “I am my work, even though I paint animals. (…) I am that monkey, and that cat that I paint so much, I am also a pig or a cow, like so many other animals, sometimes I am a hybrid (…).” Through his work Laya manifests himself one and multiple.

In his paintings, the aesthetically deformed animal figures emerge from violent, explosive, gestural stains, loaded with pictorial matter, textures and expressive colors through whose visual elements Laya lets his deepest emotions and feelings flow conditioned by the adversities of life.

José Gregorio Noroño