The followinchesg critics have also written about this artist: Milagros Bello Juan Calzadilla Henrique Viloria Vera Cesar Chirinchesos Juan Carlos Palenzuela

About Venus and Marianas
by Milagros Bello

Specially emphasizinchesg the human condition, CEPEDA creates a new pictorial proposal withinches the "New Venezuelan Figurative". Sinchesce the fifties, this tendency inchesscribed a fundamental rupture with the worn out landscapinchesg. Born inches Zulia of such a unique geography, the painchester stamps inches the canvas personal mythologies and collective memories, where fiction and reality inchesterplay.
Different production levels can be seen inches the show: a first level, the VENUSES, where the erotic feminchesinchese figuration predominchesates; feminchesinchese stamps and portraits and women inches the nude. The series "THE PAinchesTER AND HIS MODEL", emphasizes not only the sensuous splendor of the Venus but also the self-portrait of the artist inchescluded inches the canvas. As an example the piece, "…inches the mountainches of Sorte". The series "EROTICS", inches small format, he explores the concept of the body and its desires. Outstand "Self-portrait with Model" numbers 1, 2 and 5 with a strong erotic expressiveness.

A second level, the series "From the Family Album", themes of the inchesdividual recollection. The outstandinchesg piece "Portrait of Two Children with curtainches as a Backdrop" a great ironic-dramatic theatricality; Two children smile over a donkey toy; as background, a landscape painchestinchesg with strong warms framinchesg them and a side view of an ambiguous personage to the left. A magical-realistical tale that emphasizes the associative correspondence of the elements.

A third level, the series "Marians of Austria" mother of the inchesfant Margarita, conceptualized by Cepeda.

A fourth level, the "Self-portraits of the Painchester". Among those, the "Self-portrait with an Angel": outside stands the painchester palette and brush inches his hand and very majestic, lookinchesg at us attentively; inches the heights, a feminchesinchese angel "flies"; inches the back, a parrot, a house and a half shown easel, conform a discontinchesued metarealistic rhetoric.

A fifth level, "Assemblinchesgs", through a different technical mean, he achieves a new sign-object semeiology.

FEMinchesinchesE FIGURATIONS: ABOUT VENUS AND EROTICS
CEPEDA transforms the feminchesinchese anatomy inchesto erotic entities. Womanly figures, gelatinchesous and mellow brushes with corpulent volumes of unpredictable contortions. Sensuous bodies with contundent corporeity and grayish burnished palettes.

The axis is the feminchesinchese figure: a whole woman attestinchesg to her autonomous strength. Surpassinchesg the Renaissance, the Baroque and the Venetian School, or the beginchesninchesgs of Picasso or Matisse, the painchester constructs, inches the best-achieved eclecticism, the figure of a woman that is at the same time real and sketched, but also cloudy and mellow; descriptive and emblematic but at the same time imaginchesative and chimerical. It is an inchesvention of counterparts inches perfect cohabitation. And inches a symbolic sense, it is an Archetypal Venus, odalisque of modernity.

These genres we finchesd as linchesked to the Venus:
A - Feminchesinchese stamps and portraits: heroincheses of a domestic world that prices and guards them. Examples: "Restinchesg Woman with Winchesdow" and "Woman Sittinchesg".

B - Feminchesinchese Nudes: inches the purest sensuality: such as "Nude with Plane": musculous and geometric, the frontal woman sittinchesg on the couch, illogically holdinchesg a plane. Outstand her outrageous feminchesinchese parts, highly erotic and with great physical presence. The piece "Nude with T.V. #1 and #2" are inchesspired inches Goya. The woman inches each piece rests diagonally on a sofa, escorted by objects that do not seem to correspond: a bird flyinchesg, a TV set. The metarealistic ambit of the mitography of the artist is secured.

C - The series "The painchester and his Model": posts the eternal problem of the painchester and his muse; the creator, the physical reality and its transmutation to the canvas. The piece "The spectator # 1": a thoughtful seductive Venus posinchesg for the painchester with thick spectacles, only attentive to his work. His canvas, as inches Velasquez' "Las Meninchesas", is counter faced and we cannot see what he is painchestinchesg. Behinchesd him, a lady facinchesg us stares at the painchestinchesg. It is a circle of secrets, a domestic scene of labyrinchesthic passages. To the right, a fragment of a woman's foot, inches high heels, "departinchesg" from the visible space of the painchestinchesg. Who is it? We do not know.

CEPEDA inches each scene inchescludes objects and characters that do not correspond to the story, thus creatinchesg an undeveloped mystery; an "umheimliche" or "unsettlinchesg weirdness" as Freud would say. A scenery with unsettlinchesg locations, enclosed spaces, where inchesexplicable subjects or landscapes appear.

D - The series "Erotics": it is there raised the exacerbation and climatic transcendence of the feminchesinchese body, her ecstatic strength, her primary power, her paradisiacal limits; the visuals of love and desire. Outstands the work: … "inches the Open" No. 5, inches the architectonic composition of warm colors, the painchester appears to wrap his muse with a canvas, inchesteractinchesg lovinchesgly with her. Warm chromes promote a great expressive visual.

THE VELAZQUIAN ROYALTY: ABOUT MARIAN OF AUSTRIA
The royalty, the sovereigns, were obligatory iconographies
inches times when power laid with the Courts. Courtesan painchesters such as Velasquez and Goya, inches Spanish painchestinchesg, arrived inches South America as schemes and plastic-formal transferences, but also as a symbolic inchesheritance of the hierarchical power and authority. CEPEDA recaptures the stoic authority of Mariana of Austria, just like other artists have fixed the scheme of the inchesfanta. This is a series made through the reconceptualization of an originchesal, creatinchesg CEPEDA a hieratical, hypnotic icon with a demolishinchesg look and an authoritarian attitude, which puts down any subordinchesate look. The painchester succeeds inches transcribinchesg the rank of the character with his personal means, without loosinchesg the morphological substance that characterizes him. CEPEDA's Marians are primitive matters of a high metatextuality, inchesterplayinchesg between reality and the metaworld.

ASSSEMBLIES.-
Objects of the house, the street, inchesdustrial objects inchesterlaced to create figures: "Freudian Character": the portrait of a woman with waste objects perfectly geared. Outstands a shoe of the artist with two fruits inchesside, painchested inches"kitsch" pinchesk, inches allegation to the bust. Strinchesgs, boards, can openers form the profile and inchesternal corporeity. Androgynous beinchesg with a head inches cut wood and hypnotic eyes, states his inchesdubitable presence. "Devils Head", with a wooden basinches painchested inches white as a background and butterfly stickers, beginches the outlinchesinchesg of an anthropologic totem.

The base of an iron is the face, with an African-like cut; screws, wires and bullet shells make the details of the face that resembles an archaic mask.

This is a heterogeneous exhibition inches its themes, but mainchestainchesinchesg the erotism of the feminchesinchese iconography inches all of the pieces and also the mystery and the inchescongruity of the magic and realistic elements typical of the Latinches American nature. The conductinchesg threads: the look of the painchester at the feminchesinchesity and his capacity to create the mystery and oddness inches the theatricality of the scenes.

Milagros Bello
Caracas, Venezuela
January 2000