“Magic realism” was the first thing that came to mind when I saw “Francachela: Art of Latin America,” the exhibit now at the Queens Library’s Central Branch in Jamaica.
Closer inspection revealed that the paintings by 18 Latin…
zehrj gBy Arlene McKanic
“Magic realism” was the first thing that came to mind when I saw “Francachela: Art of Latin America,” the exhibit now at the Queens Library’s Central Branch in Jamaica.
Closer inspection revealed that the paintings by 18 Latin American artists are not exactly magically realistic, but they’re vivid, fantastical, and full of deep, pre-Columbian (if not prehistoric) symbolism.
Most have bold colors and forms. Lucia Haack’s “Andean Aurora” and “Andean Mummy Symbiosis” are works of mixed technique on canvas that show bright fabrics wrapped in and around boulders. Obviously this Chilean artist used fine sand in the paint, which gave the works a delightful texture — you’re almost irresistibly tempted to touch them. Her “Forest Sea” (2004) is an equally tempting painting of a reclining woman whose flesh is also a blend of paint and sand.
Brazilian Anete Cunha’s “Meditating I and II” features dreamy young women surrounded by squares of color — one set of squares painted in warm colors and the other in cool blues and lavenders — accented with delicate swirls of bright gold paint.
Mariano Cinat paints huge rooms filled with such sizzling red and yellow light that the human figures within them are reduced to smudgy shadows. The saturated colors reminded me of waiting rooms in the inferno, or in the heart of the sun, but the artist, a wiry young man from Argentina, says it’s not quite true.
“I just chose the color because I like warm colors, reds and oranges and yellows,” he said. “I never do a sketch, I just paint whatever comes to my mind and that’s it. I start seeing things when I paint the colors, the colors tell me something. I want people to think whatever they want. I don’t want to tell them what it is before hand.”
Cinat, who lives in Los Angeles, has exhibited all over the world, and this is the first time he has exhibited in New York.
The Argentinean artist Luisa Osdoba is also one of the exhibit’s organizers. The three large paintings she has in the exhibit are dreamlike and compelling. She says she likes to explore places you can’t see directly. Her “Before Beginning” reminded me of what it might look like inside fallopian tubes, with its shadowy, grapey bunches of things. In “Before Dawn,” a glowing, starry light peeks from behind what looks like unfurling clouds, and in “Quicksilver Confessions” (2001) the viewer seems to be looking up from the depths of the ocean into an oblong of clear sky, as if you’re sitting in a reverse glass bottom boat. As for the exhibit itself, Osdoba said, “We wanted there to be different styles, different ways of perceiving reality.”
And speaking of different realities, Marcelo Guiracocha of Ecuador creates beautiful and intricate impasto mandalas filled with a mysterious script that looks like something between Sanskrit and Arabic.
Ecuadorean Hernan Illescas has a painting of three pyramids, the center one filled with symbols and an all-seeing eye. “It’s the symbol of good and bad,” the artist said.
Enrique Davila Cobos’ “Cyclical Dreams” features three dozing Indian women. Above them figures of animals and signs of the zodiac are scratched into friezes like petroglyphs, as is a figure of a crescent moon.
The Ecuadorean artist’s English wasn’t that good, and my Spanish nearly nonexistent, so we spoke through an interpreter — who was French. It seems that the painting had something to do with femaleness, as did a surprising number of the works.
Jose Osorio of Colombia uses unfinished, somewhat ugly, Degas-like female bodies in his untitled works. Brazil’s Guajassy Bruijns Gallindo, for example, has a painting of “a wild woman who’s also a nice girl,” as she puts it. In it a woman with flowing hair twined with flowers is painted multiple times as she makes love to a man. A tropical forest blooms behind the bed but a rosary is twined around a bedpost. “Don’t take the first impression too seriously,” said the artist. “Everything has a lot of meanings.”
Francachela was founded in 1996 by the Chilean poet Carlos Aranguiz Zuniga and its mission is to integrate Latin America through art.
Francachela: Art of Latin America will be at the Central Library, 89-11 Merrick Blvd., through May 29.
