The Wizard Was Interrupted Before Pirates

Marcelo Aguirre - Pictures - The Container, Quito

Photo Gallery: Pepe Aviles

Text key "light" for the Journal armchair (well actually the magazine was never published, so maybe it's share)

Marcelo Aguirre: balances, inventories and payables.

By Rodolfo Kronfle Chambers

In the month of February was presented in the Gallery Series The Container latest artist Quito, simply titled "Portraits."

could say that much of the work of Marcelo Aguirre is brewing after a life experience. His series are due to such visceral reaction to the reality they experience, is this your answer to the political or existential inquiry intimate character. Always settled in languages \u200b\u200bthat have marked history expressionist aesthetics Aguirre's work is mostly perceived as impulsive gestures of representation. Therefore

events that shook the world in October 2009 could not fail to be decanted visually in one way or another. A diagnosis of leukemia reconfigured their perspectives on life. A grim picture was perceived as a race against time to acquire a priority determined, parallel to medical therapy, overtones of catharsis and release: Aguirre saldaría what he called his "debt to the portrait." He began by admitting that no delay, his mother, brother and children - to follow in their close friends and other relatives. These 33 "other" Franks added a pair of self-portraits (one made to start the series and at the end) as bookends to hold the collection and emotionally aware of that essential "I" marks the beginning and the end of this hard stage.

To challenge the time factor artist design an efficient method to counteract the anxiety of being left halfway through your project. The fabrics would be based snapshots taken in a very spontaneous with his camera. Then would project the images on each canvas, and from that using acrylics and a carefree quick strokes bill would complete each painting in one session of about two hours. The effect is very attractive, so I agree with the artist once said about the visible brush strokes "in a gesture says it all."

This abrupt approach, suitable only for tanned skills allowed him to recreate a world, which saw vibrates together with an unusual intensity, something that we could escape if you appreciate a separate box solo. For understand it as much exposure as one work, as an inventory, which must be understood in the relationships between fabric and woven fabric as the rootstock affects that contains an existence. It's a metaphor, in that sense, very powerful and profound: a balance, a collection of anecdotes and a stratigraphic cut their human experience. Equivalent to an album that contains a sea of \u200b\u200bstrengths, and that seems to have wanted to bequeath.

Personally I never felt that the artist had a debt to the portrait, I have very much present a series of her own which is among my favorite works of Ecuadorian art in recent decades. This is an impressive and unforgettable gallery of dogs ( Gallery Pictures, 2004), each of the 40 inks in a very acute reflecting the character and to the psychological profile of the animals. The profusion of them makes the whole is of great interest to me because whenever you see me driving, though it is dog-to think about the man and his complex, their sorrows, their insecurities, etc. I find it almost as interesting as the main anthropological portraiture delirium in the country: the Yellow Room at the Palacio de Carondelet, whose terrifying imagery leads us reluctantly remember every time we think of this kind in Ecuador.

artist I want to contradict something. The gallery presents a file more than portraits of faces. Close-ups of faces that cover almost the entire composition. Practically no poses, no bodily gesture that complements the subject's facial expression. There are flat bottoms instead of bright colors, bright red, purple, violet, green and yellow, to which just highlights not only the face, but the most telling attribute of the individual: the eyes, often meeting with ours and -based photo-reference with the same artist. The portrait usually denotes order, the attention on the pure face instead, the approach of (re) knowledge. In the characters in this series have been exempted from what is, become prominent factions can return the memory to be probed.

Life was generous with Aguirre, the countdown stopped his progress. Already recovered and free of disease until Marcelo jokes a couple of months ago told me that "chemo" was the only drug that had failed to prove. Genio ... to the grave.

New York, February 10, 2011