The Iconic
Art as a mere search for aesthetic beauty was never sufficient for me. My goal has always been to paint pictures whose content goes beyond the surface of the canvas. I never stop looking for ways to represent the world I live in. To make the unseen seen.
The day I discovered Byzantine Art, I was immediately drawn to it. Especially when I saw its resemblance to El Greco's paintings, an artist I’ve admired since childhood. I noticed that Byzantine art preferred stylized imagery over naturalistic depictions. It aimed at inspiring a sense of wonder and admiration for the church. The church, being an institution, and I, being interested in social structures, Byzantine art caught my attention. I’m not talking about the religious content of Byzantine art here, but the construction of its compositions and their usefulness in making it possible to tell big stories using images. Why not use it to depict today's social structures and even our ideologies?
Arrival to Chile
When I arrived in Chile, I was surprised by how much the country had changed. Thirty-nine years earlier, it had been a country in chaos. Now, Santiago was a radiant city, impeccably tidy, organized, and full of shiny skyscrapers standing tall in every corner. While I walked the streets, reminiscing, I was overtaken by a bittersweet feeling. On the one hand, the sight of its many brand-new shopping malls, restaurants, and cafés filled with cheery people eating, drinking, and lining up at ATMs filled me with joy, yet, at the same time, it brought back memories of the military dictatorship that had claimed so many lives to bring the country to what it was now. The past dictatorship had affected me deeply; it had changed my life and my perception of the world.
2012
I found an apartment for my mother. It was next to the Museum of Fine Arts. I met with the director of the museum to propose to him an exhibition of my work. Having lived most of my life outside of Chile, nobody knew me there, so my idea was to present a retrospective of my work to introduce myself to the Chilean public. The response from the museum was cold.
I then visited all the major art galleries in Santiago, but there was no interest. I had often heard the expression, “No one is a prophet in their own land,” and thought it was pure nonsense. Maybe because I had never lived in my land before. Now that I did, the expression was turning out to be true.
I received a call. It was Alexandre Frenkel, the owner of Galerie de Buci in Paris. I had been in Paris and left a body of work with him. Some large canvases had been sold. He was calling me now to tell me he was organizing an exhibition of my work and needed more paintings. I proposed I travel to Paris and paint them there; that way, we would save on the shipping of the artwork, to which he agreed. I arrived in Paris early in the morning and was put in a spacious apartment with a piano overlooking a lake. It was there that I painted the second part of my series of paintings, Sarcastic Allegories.
Simplicity in art is removing the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.
I always strove for simplicity. Yet, the simpler the paintings get, the more difficult they are to paint. They are challenging because, having almost no elements in their composition, no textures, and nearly no colors, every brushstroke you apply sticks out like a brilliant explosion. Even the studio lighting plays an important role in their execution and outcome. If the external light hitting the canvas doesn’t reflect appropriately, it affects the painting's appearance significantly. To modify this reflected light to shine harmoniously, one has to ensure that the paint is applied and distributed in a balanced way. This means combing the surface of the canvas with a feathery brush (fan brush) while continuously maintaining a constant direction in every brush stroke to the angle of the light entering the room, light that can only be seen by tilting one's head and looking at the paintings from its sides. All this has to be done very quickly before the paint dries. I apply this manner of working at every stage and between every layer of the execution of my paintings. These details are extremely labor-consuming compared to a complicated piece, where its elements can be vague and ambiguous. In a minimalist composition, nothing can be hidden; everything is in plain sight.
Flatness is beautiful, and so is volume. But since most things that inhabit the earth are volumetric, seeing the absence of it can bring immense pleasure. Aside from that, being that canvases are two-dimensional, anything flat will feel right at home on the canvas.
2012
After the exhibition in Paris, I returned to Chile. I painted a series of paintings portraying human figures devoid of emotion. Whether this is how I saw humanity at that time or not, these paintings were more about me not wanting to feel anything. I called this series “With Anesthesia.”
2013
I was invited to exhibit at Gallery One, a gallery in Nashville, Tennessee. Nashville, at that time, was promoting itself as the cultural mecca of the South of the United States. Even though I had driven across the United States many times, I had never visited Nashville. This was a good opportunity to do so. The exhibition went well; I gave a talk about my work. Afterward, someone asked me about the meaning of a painting of a baby surrounded by guns (Baby with Guns, 2013). I don’t remember what I said, but it must have been controversial because the room turned silent after my explanation. At that time, I knew nothing about the southern stance on gun control. Anyway, a good review was written in the Nashville Arts magazine, and I returned to Chile.
2014
My mother passed away.
It was the saddest day.
2014
I submitted another proposal for an exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, but it was declined. That same year I found out that the piece Nineteen Seventy-Three, which had been on loan to the Chilean Embassy in Washington DC., had disappeared. Till today, no one knows where it is.
2015
At this time, I didn’t have a cell phone. I realized that I couldn’t function anymore without one, so I got one. It took me some time to get used to it and make it work properly, but there was no going back once I did. Seeing so many people immersed in their cell phones in the most unusual ways drove me to work on a series of paintings on the subject. I titled this series “Blue Light.”
2015
I picked up on a series of small studies that I had started a year earlier, around when my mother died. A series that I would return to now and then whenever I grappled with doubt.
2016
It was a bright and sunny morning when the phone rang. It was Patricia, from Mexico. She called to inform me that I had been invited to participate in an exhibition at the Gabriel Garcia Marquez Cultural Center in Bogotá, Colombia. The show would include twenty-eight Mexican artists, one Colombian, and myself. The event was to pay homage to Frida Kahlo. The exhibition was organized by Alvaro Velarca of the Mexican Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Ouroboros
The ouroboros is an ancient symbol of a snake eating its tail, representing infinity and the cycle of birth and death. I painted a series of paintings to give shape and form to some never-ending social behaviors that I find absurd. I titled this series “Carrousel.”
2017
Marcela Gana called to tell me that she had found an interesting space to exhibit my work. It was a new building under construction. One of its spaces was destined to be an art gallery. Only, I had to wait for a while because the building was still under construction.
Order holds everything together and brings stability. On the other hand, if one wants to venture further and discover new possibilities, one will inevitably disrupt that order. How far can we break away from the constraints of order without losing our way? That is the measure of art.
Antidotes Against War
I thought of all the times I had read about the great technological advances in weaponry. Most of the articles presented those innovations as scientifical, human achievements.
From the throwing of rocks to the invention of the bow and arrow; from muskets to machineguns; from missiles that can aim at enemy targets to missiles with sophisticated sensors that can follow the moving targets, and artificial intelligence robots that can run and kill humans no matter where they hide, I thought it was time to ridicule these powerful weapons of mass destruction. I painted eight large paintings, poking fun at those killing machines. I titled the series "Antidotes Against War."
I covered the gallery floor with prints of iconic images of bombers, warships, and the rest of the war paraphernalia so that everyone entering the exhibition was forced to walk over them while viewing the paintings on the walls.
OPENING RECEPTION
Installation
As the viewers moved between the paintings trampling and crushing the prints of bombers scattered on the floor, they approached a wall in the background, where a montage of those same prints of bombers hung. Only now, they were inverted. They were negatives. Here, the war icons had become no more than backgrounds – holes – cut out from the surface. The iconic images were no longer black weapons against a white background but instead empty spaces left by what used to be weapons. (the end of the war)
2018
When looking around in any direction, it is incredible to see how far we've strayed from nature. In a way, it’s understandable. For thousands of years, nature terrorized us and made our lives miserable. From viruses to bacteria; from poisoned plants to wild predatory animals; from sand storms to hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, and asteroids falling from the heavens, how would we be friendly to nature?
I painted a series of paintings of a world stripped of sky, trees, rivers, and mountains.
Synthetic Universe
2019
Synthetic Universe: A world where all paths have been outlined beforehand. A world where little men and women hang in the balance, suspended in a struggle to try and find themselves and to find others, to touch, to ascertain, and convince themselves that they are real. A world devoid of surprises and stripped of all its nonsensical magic but superficially and artificially elegant.
2019
The Chilean protests began, known in Chile as the Social Outburst. It started with massive demonstrations and severe riots in response to a rise in the Santiago Metro's subway fare, the high cost of living, and the inequality prevalent in the country.
I watched on the news a police officer kneeling on the back of a man's neck for about nine minutes. Video footage from bystanders at the scene showed the man choking to death while he implored that he couldn't breathe. No one intervened.
2020
I took a walk through history to take a fresh look at the origins of art. I looked at prehistoric cave paintings and was fascinated by their beauty. I was struck by how the ancient artists could see through the complexity of the world and its creatures and recreate it by taking away all that is superfluous, leaving only the essential. The paintings evoked a sense of calm and stillness of mind, allowing me to see the world from afar.
I use mostly blacks, browns, greys, and whites when it comes to color. They are the colors of the earth, the rocks, and the bark of trees. For me, these colors represent stability. Everything that is more transient tends to be brightly colored, such as flowers, fruit, and insects. Earthy colors are timeless. Even though my life has been a sequence of ephemeral moments, in art, I prefer durableness.
2021
Byzantine art was not realistic but symbolic, and it served to express the theological teachings of the church. Icons were more than mere religious pictures; believers venerated them as if they were the real thing. People were capable of pouring every milliliter of themselves into an iconic figure or idol in hopes of them bringing things they desired in return. Later on, Icons were found to be so useful in communicating messages that they were incorporated into advertisement and publicity. Just as religious icons were considered to be entrances into the presence of the Holy, nowadays, Icons serve as soul windows into the divinity of material things, as well as an invitation to keep one’s eyes open while one prays for them. I use the iconic style not to propagate the teachings of religion nor to advertise consumer products but to show more clearly the world as it is.
2021
One day, when riding on a bus, I couldn’t help noticing how well the driver operated the vehicle. Unlike many drivers that tend to be rough, this man made a conscious effort to stop every time in the smoothest way possible and right on target at every bus stop. Likewise, he would step on the gas with such gentleness when departing that we could barely feel the bus moving. I was sitting in the front row, right behind the driver, and by the expression on his face in the rear-view mirror, it was evident that he loved driving and felt proud of his skills. It’s not that often that you see someone so dedicated to what they do. It always gives me immense pleasure to see. All of a sudden, I was shaken. At a point on the route where he was supposed to take a right, he kept on going straight ahead. I wondered whether I’d taken the right bus or had seen the wrong number when I took it in the first place. At that time, I couldn’t see well, I had cataracts, and everything looked blurry. I looked around to see if any other passengers looked surprised, but they didn’t. They were expressionless, each minding their business. I decided to wait for a little. I had never taken this bus on a Saturday; maybe there was a variation of the route on weekends. Besides, he was such an excellent driver that he couldn’t have made a mistake. After waiting for a while, it became evident that we were going too far from the direction I was supposed to go, so I stood up and asked the driver, “Is this the number 401 bus?”
A minute of silence went by, and then “Damn!” exclaimed the driver. He had made a mistake and gone off track, way off route. The bus was one of those huge, long caterpillar ones. For the next half hour, we found ourselves lost in a maze of little neighborhood streets, tearing down the branches from the trees and running over sidewalks. The driver struggled desperately, exercising all kinds of complicated and impossible maneuvers to get the big six-wheeler monster back on route.
This experience reminded me of certain moments in painting when you are blessed by a streak of inspiration and let yourself be carried away until you suddenly find yourself in altogether unknown territory. It is an exceptional moment in which one doesn’t arrive at the original vision intended but, instead, discovers an entirely new way of painting.
2021
Covid arrived and turned the world upside down. Being in lockdown for quite a while, I had plenty of time to sit in front of the computer screen and watch the news. I noticed that Covid, apart from infecting people, seemed to be also infecting the information. Disconcerting news of poisonous bee invasions, terrorist plots, flying saucers, and countless other such stories poured out from the screen. I recorded those reports by stenciling them onto a canvas. I titled the painting “Information Pandemic.”
Life in Series
When you spend so much time on the internet, and there’s so much information directed at you by so many unrelated sources to the point that nothing makes sense anymore, it is best to go back to your origins and try to find what was the purpose that got lost on the way.
I had just taken a new look at prehistoric art. Later that day, I was riding the subway. As I rode along, I noticed a sign that depicted an icon of a woman giving up her seat to an older man. The image immediately reminded me of the figures I had seen painted on the ancient cave walls. The similarity between early primitive art and today’s icons became evident. After arriving at my studio, y used iconic imagery to paint a series of paintings of people and their computers.
2022
To find meaning in the subjects one paints, one must see beyond all the artificial elements around it. For example, when painting a person engaged with their phone, I take away everything that is not natural from that scene. What is left is a human being interacting with light. By removing all that is artificial, I can get closer to the meaning concealed beneath.
My path in art has been a continuous expression of my thoughts and feelings about a constantly changing world. Style - regardless of the content of the painting - reveals the thinking process. As the world changes, so do my thoughts. Therefore, my style is constantly changing.