The MET Series (2015)

The MET Series began during two months spent wandering through the Metropolitan Museum of Art following Arango’s return to New York City. Inspiration from three-year travelling overlapped with the artifacts housed at the MET, often with origins in the countries he’d visited. Like the world journey, intuition guided him through the halls of the museum, walking endlessly some days until the perfect subject to draw was found. It might be an artifact, a painting, sculpture or the architecture of the museum itself. Walking, followed by sitting on the cold stone floor to draw details, watching legs while hoping not to be trampled by distracted patrons, became the daily ritual. The impact of  architectonics is integral to the finished work. Arango creates tight structures within his works to act as a point of departure from which to explore a looser imagining of line and form in the composition, and to liberate the self within a rigid homogenizing society.