Undo and redo, recent paintings by Carlos Ampuero
Arturo Duclos
Carlos Ampuero’s recent paintings are fresh and robust with a touch of parody. In this new series he has undertaken a mayor challenge, an eloquent reflection of a four year pause of painstaking work. This is an interesting proposal, which considers the platform of digital representation as bases for pictorial renovation.
As is often the case when commenting on new exhibitions one tends to compare past production so as to provide a basis for comparison in relation to new works. I will avoid this monotonous task in order to examine Ampuero’s new paintings with more freedom.
Carlos Ampuero’s endeavors in this new series of work, have entailed a rigorous incursion in the study of 3d computer graphics programs. One of the most interesting aspects of this exercise is precisely the use of new technology to carefully study and elaborate his strange paintings, while resisting the temptation of merely printing the results. A resource, which, if one naively pretends to emulate the digital screen can lead to a quick disillusion in the new technologies. In this overstated logic (for some), indispensable though for those in the trade, a significant amount of time must be invested in the investigation of the resources which lead to the making of a realistic painting. When the reference or model is non-existent, as is the case, the use of photographs, studies, images, and so on, become indispensable as a means of compiling studies previous to drawings and painting before their application on the canvass. In this case Ampuero has made use of three dimensional representation to produce studies, viewpoints, angles, projections, constructions and de-constructions of the diverse elements which compose his paintings. Skillfully the artist has developed a procedural network to translate images to oil paint, architectural icons translated to scale models interwined with furniture and decorative objects, apparently immersed in sanitized world which is at the same time real and unreal, all these thanks to the visualization possibilities of a 3D image on screen. Ampuero manages to configure images of history and of art, such as the Soviet flag signaling the fall of Berlin during the end of the Second World War, the Statue of Liberty, Tatlin’s monument, the Tate Gallery or Damian Ortega’s Volkswagen, icons of Modernism and Postmodernism like the fallacies of the utopias in between the frozen atmospheres of his pictorial representation.
Apparently Ampuero’s operation seems to be just a juxtaposition of paradoxical resources, skillfully manipulated into a realist representation, however, when making a serious revision of the artists proposal, we find a vast progression of instances that arise from a deep reflection on history and his vision of the contemporary world. Ampuero establishes transversal commentaries in between his paintings, the dialogue of power and its historical contexts, the failure of utopias and libertarian promises, icons of the modern world and of ideal geometries, the sum of monumental projects. These allow us to view from a distance and imagine how these elements move within a false plane of representation. It’s like the film “The Truman Show”, a scale model of reality which makes it possible to go back and correct mistakes, as if we had pressed the “undo” key of our laptop.
Under this particular viewpoint, Ampuero’s gaze shows and presents us, in a fictional way of course, this latter possibility where by the different elements of representation are conceived as being at the disposal of the viewer. The subtle artifice of three dimensional representation allow the fragmentation of such elements to exceed the physical dimension of the canvas and transpose the elements almost randomly between one painting and the other to conform new visions. Ampuero has consciously, through his research of virtual solutions through computer images, liberated painting from a suggestive function in relation to its references thus installing it in a hall of mirrors, in turn liberating and inviting the viewer to de-construct and re-position history.
After his return from the United Kingdom in the mid-nineties, where Ampuero lived and developed as an artist, he participated in many individual and group exhibitions. With this current exhibition Ampuero, without a doubt imposes himself as a reflexive referent in the field of contemporary Chilean painting.
Re-vision and re-presentation: A commentary on recent paintings by Carlos Ampuero
Prof. Brian Falconbridge, PRBS London, April 2007
I met Carlos Ampuero a few years ago when I visited Chile for the first time. He was kind enough to act as my sympathetic interlocutor when I spoke about the fine art of teaching fine art to students in Santiago with particular reference to the Goldsmiths College of Art model in London. I am now pleased to have the opportunity to return the compliment and act as one of his sympathetic interlocutors in the presentation of his new works to the wider audience. My task in this case is to compose text without direct sight of the final finished products, the paintings. In so doing, I will discuss the broad implications of Ampuero’s revised approach as I see it, at the same time seeking to offer an interpretation of the content with a partial contextualisation of the work within art history and contemporary society.
The fact that I am writing in the UK about work that is still in progress in Chile might seem problematic. There are, however, some advantages in attempting this international, intercontinental reach. I am often struck by the way in which distance can be the conduit for insight and understanding. When I am away from home, in foreign lands, I sometimes feel that I am able to see myself and my situation more clearly. This is perhaps due to the radical change of context and the opportunity to emerge from established routine. In something of the same way, my current ‘view’ (a term capable of plural meanings) of Ampuero’s new work is from thousands of miles away. . I see the work through the transfer of digital imagery, mediated through the screen of my laptop, Apple Mac to Apple Mac. Naturally I am informed by my memory and sense of place – where the paintings were and are being made and will be seen – and by my past and present exchanges with the artist.
These paintings are complex works, complex in the process of articulating and presenting form, space and perspective and complex in imagery represented, calling on architectural icons of world renown and well as objects more modest in scale, ranging from the domestic to the quasi scientific. These are all known objects or types of objects from the world of shared direct mundane experience such as a chair or those which have entered the international collective memory, such as the Statue of Liberty.
The art historical tradition which may be referred to (and here I do not exclude others) is that of the metaphysical still life. While the human figure is not seen directly – Ampuero has consciously and deliberately excised the figure from his new visual repertoire – the human presence is indicated in absentia. The empty chair implies an absence, either that of a departing or that of an awaiting or anticipation of an arrival and occupancy. Travel is implied by such as the sextant, once an essential vade mecum for the serious sea-borne explorer before GPS (Global Positioning System) satellite navigation. The electric fan sits confidently in the centre, implying not only a cooling breeze in a hot room but also on a grander scale it carries the implication of propulsion by air or sea. All the while, there is the gaze of the ticking clock of uncertain time, about which one is bound to wonder if it is 5 minutes past 9 or 10 minutes past 10…or is it perhaps later than you think? Relativity of scale also here applies to time and our temporary occupation in it.
Recreating the world in the studio in itself is not new – the great English painter Gainsborough created model landscapes from which to paint. Even John Constable re-arranged rural scenes on the canvas in his studio. What is new here, with the advent of advanced but accessible digital technology, is the potential to articulate imagery in a myriad of ways. Mastery of new technology is not an end in itself – one must maintain a critical and original voice with whatever means of production in use – but it is a means to an end. That end is a revitalisation of painting, where Ampuero knowingly works as a self- challenging citizen of the 21st century, embracing new ways to respond to both timeless beliefs and uncertainties within the new situation that confronts all of us as we seek to understand and live in the world in transition. This then is Ampuero’s new work, the artist’s studio in the world and the world in the artist’s studio.
Tempus Fugit
Dr. Chris Jennings, Senior Lecturer, Department of Art, London Metropolitan University
Dear Carlos,
As with the arrival of photography in the 19th century, the ‘digital revolution’ has thrown up very important considerations for the practice of the painter. Far from suggesting that ‘as from today, painting is dead’, I feel that, in a very real sense, painting has again been liberated, through a focus on what it is that painting is uniquely equipped to do. The digital camera has largely replaced the sketch/ notebook. Of course, this may be hugely useful and beneficial, but often has ‘short circuited’ fundamental issues of ‘witness’ and ‘testament’. The forms and images may suffer from the absence of the physical and tactile mediation of drawing or other proce- dures of manufacture. . I am reminded of Andrew Wiles, who ‘cracked’ Fermat’s last theorem, one of the great mathemat- ical challenges of the modern era. He said that he couldn’t work on a computer because it wouldn’t allow him to go with an interesting mistake. He worked all the time with pen or pencil on graph or other paper. I often refer to Merleau-Ponty in this respect and the notion of incarna- tion, i.e. the recording of the substance of experience, the perception and concept being embodied [embedded?] in physical materials and their manipula- tion, ie. the language of materials. This leads to some debate on the nature of the ‘transcendence’ of the material. Too often I have seen potentially good ideas going ‘dead in the water’ through the use of digital [or photographic] proc- esses where there is an absence of the presence of ‘touch’. In other words, we may get the pictorial information but are not enabled to access the experience through a real, as opposed to a virtual, engagement with the ‘noumenon’, the thing as it is in itself.
Here concepts of time and the ‘performa- tive’ nature of the business of painting may arise. It always has seemed curious to me that so called ‘time based media’ is assumed to consist primarily of activity with film/video/camera, ie. the photo- graphic or moving image. Nothing could be more time based than the practice of painting. Indeed, the passage of time and its recording in the execution of a work may constitute a critical and clearly identified element in or on the surface, material procedure and ultimately in the constituents of the meaning of the work. This, of course, may well have a qual- ity of the didactic in it, ‘I did this and then I did that’ and so forth. However, it may imbue the work with moments of conspicuous emphasis and avoid a sense of the surface presenting its ele- ments as being equivalent, or having an equivalence of import. This accumulative pressure onto, incision into, and ‘swell- ing’ outwards, from the surface, can be invaluable. Through this experiential and tactile ‘journeying’ across the surface, concepts of immanence or the immanent can be addressed.
Be all this as it may, you have asked me what the perception of your work may be via the electronic devices that enable such contact to be made. Needless to say, of course what I see are images of the work. Therefore, and if we are going to be pedantic, it is Arturo Duclos who will be able to deliver a critical appraisal of the work ‘as it is in itself’. What I can glean from the images (pictures of the work) that I have in front of me is the ter- ritory within which the work operates. It is as though you have provided me with a corner of an Ordnance Survey map showing me some details of what the experience of your work may be. Over the ‘net’, maybe this is all it can be!
In any event what I see has only served to reaffirm the quality and integrity of your work. The attention to the detail of the work is, as ever, achieved in the most rigorous and exemplary manner. Casting my mind back some quarter of a century (!) to our first contact at Chelsea School of Art, I remember the serious commitment which underpinned all your thinking and making. As I expected this has not gone away. This, of course, is in addition to all the conversations and wine that flowed over the years of our friendship!
Debate to be continued? As always, I warmly extend my ‘hand across the sea’.
Chris.