"Lo que es arriba es abajo... ” - High relief on Canvas / Gastón Charó

Series: Surreal - Cubist 
High relief on canvas. Extensions in High relief on wood.
Size with no extensions: 122 cm x 184 cm 
Size with extensions: 185 cm x 280 cm x 15 cm 
Price: 790,000 Mexican pesos 
Original painting and one of a kind.
Certificate of authenticity
"As above, so below. As within, so without. What divides multiplies.
Each person, each day, has the power to create their own evolutionary portal.”
In this work, Gastón Charó does not simply construct a face — he constructs a system. A symbolic architecture where matter, fragmentation, and consciousness engage in constant tension.
The piece presents itself as a large-scale relief of hybrid character — somewhere between expanded painting and sculpture — where the traditional plane breaks open to give way to an organic, living, almost tectonic surface. The central face, subtly divided into two halves, does not represent fracture but rather a hermetic principle: correspondence between realms, between above and below, between inner and outer. The division does not fragment; it multiplies.
The accumulation of materials and textures creates an emotional topography. Each embedded fragment functions as an autonomous cell and, at the same time, as part of a larger organism. The work breathes through multiplicity. There is no emptiness — there is expansion.
The lateral extensions — branching forms, wings, birds, roots that seem to emerge from thought itself — amplify the idea of expanding consciousness. However, one of the most conceptually significant aspects is that these extensions are removable. The work can contract, fold inward, return to its core.
This technical gesture is far from incidental: it reinforces the discourse. Just as the human being can expand or withdraw, the piece can do the same. It is a work that adapts, that travels, that physically transforms without losing its identity.
Designed to be transported in a compact wooden crate, its monumentality does not depend on physical scale but on symbolic energy. The work challenges the notion of size: it can be contained without ceasing to be expansive. It can be divided without losing its multiplying power.
From a critical standpoint, the piece situates itself within a contemporary line of thought in which art ceases to be a static object and becomes a transformative experience. It is not merely observed — it is confronted. The viewer’s gaze meets a gaze that seems to return an essential question:
Which part of you is above? Which part is below? What do you choose to multiply?
Here, Gastón Charó constructs a portal — not mystical in a literal sense, but symbolic: a threshold between states of consciousness. In doing so, he transforms matter into thought and texture into an evolutionary process.