Argentinean Affair Summer group show

At Lilac Gallery - New York from August 13 to Sptember

144 5th Avenue 2 Floor

with Daniel Fiorda, Chaval, Santiago Fuentes Bo, Jose Landoni & Richard Shaoul

r

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Art of Chaval & Santiago Fuentes Bo, New York, NY 10014

Small worlds, multiple connections

 

Perfect mates and partners are also in a state of tension. They run in opposite directions and use different resources in order to show different perceptions of the world. Similarly, the works of these two Argentinean artists are like batteries charged with multiple meanings, references to diverse cultures, art history, popular iconography, and a vast inner world.

Figurative art created with an almost photographic hyperrealism, eye-level focal points that allow us to see images from a clear and serene frontality, and a multiplicity of narrative elements and portrayed subjects, establish a strong link in the works of both artists. However, when they take different paths, their results can be quite different.

Chaval constructs his images from a purely pictorial perspective, for painting is his only tool and resource to build his images and display his poetry: figures, landscape, and mood created with only brushes and color; in his work, even spills and blank spaces are eloquent, and they serve a good faith narrative and aesthetic. Light is also key, and the artist always portrays it as ideal, almost apocryphal: a light of dusk, flat, melancholic, the light that makes everything look golden and a bit more beautiful, precisely because it’s about to fade into darkness.

Fuentes Bo displays a more graphic style as he starts creating with gloss paint, pencils and pens on wooden tables or PVC, connecting the world of street art and graphic design that he comes from, and creating fantastic and delirious images with an urbane and contemporary sense of humor. His hallucinatingly refined depictions of animals remind us of Frans Snyders’ portraits; that’s how we have a Dutch still life in the midst of chaotic graffiti, randomly annotated supermarket receipts, slogans, pixels, and coffee spots.

Both artists are also connected by their marked sense of humor, but, while Fuentes Bo is pop, irreverent and frivolous, Chaval prefers the unnerving, sardonic, subtly off-centered, in the midst of a reality that, while perfect, lurks menacing.

 

 

Mariano Soto - Art Historian

 

Translated by: Ivan Araque