The creative process and inspiration behind Mundo Sumo
My work as a visual artist stems from a constant search to express complex ideas arising from experiences and travels accumulated over many years that have shaped who I am. The main motivation is to transform experiences and emotions into visual pieces that impact and delight the viewer.
Sumo is a wrestling discipline with over 1,500 years of history. It is a cultural and anthropological time capsule, as it has never been seen outside its geographical environment. The sumo wrestler is a being whose physical evolution is oriented exclusively toward gaining volume and mass in order to expel his opponent from the wrestling perimeter. The physical transformation this entails represents, for the Japanese, a standard of beauty and admiration. In the fighting bull, for example, there is a parallel: its existence and the evolution of the breed are only justified by bullfighting itself, just as the sumo wrestler is defined solely by his form of combat.
In this body of work, I seek to highlight the aesthetic potential of the sumo wrestler by removing him from his natural environment and placing him in settings that border on surrealism, yet somehow justify his presence — creating a neo-pop aesthetic by integrating manga characters in some cases, breaking the anachronism of the figure, and inserting him into scenarios that feel familiar to us. I turn this wrestling character into something close to a superhero with a cosmopolitan edge.
In Mundo Sumo, I place the wrestler in settings that are entirely hostile to him due to his unfamiliarity with the surroundings — paying tribute in this way to this ancient figure by bringing him closer to all audiences and all cultures, with a deeply personal surrealist touch.
For the physical representation, I have developed a style in which a black line defines the shadows of the body, eliminating any transition — achieving a graphic style of my own that defines the DNA of the collection in every piece. The color palette spans a broad spectrum, resulting in a striking polychromy with a pop sensibility.
I must emphasize that at no point in the process have I used AI. Everything is developed by hand using a digital pen.
As for the sculptural work, I used 3D software to develop the models, based on wrestler designs from my graphic pieces. These were then printed in resin by industrial professionals (TECMOLDE), who also work with artists such as Jaume Plensa and Lorenzo Queen. Once the resin piece is produced, it undergoes polishing and experimentation to achieve different types of finish, such as chrome or porcelain.
Note: the faces of the sumo wrestlers depicted in the works are real figures from the professional world of sumo in Japan.
EDUCATION
Savannah College of Art & Design – USA Fine Arts, specialising in Graphic Design and Art History.
He has developed his professional career in the advertising and graphic design industry, evolving alongside digital technology. He has worked as Art Director and Creative Director at multinational companies in North America and Spain.
He has always painted in a private capacity, receiving commissions for portrait work in digital illustration — some for prominent public figures — and has been a pioneer in this field.
