Problemas y Secretos Maravillosos de La Indias/Problems and Marvelous
Secrets of the Indies.
Raul Guerrero
Museum of Contemporar Art, San Diego
MCA Downtown, July 26-October 25, 1998
Raul Guerrero has been an important presence on the Southern California
art scene-particularly in the San Diego/Tijuana region-- for more than
twenty years. Making paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, photographs,
and videotapes, he has forged an expansive, ever-evolving vision-one that
combines technical innovation with symbolic power. Although his style
ranges from early conceptually based abstraction to recent narrative realism,
Guerrero’s self-described “search for the poetry of life”
is a constant in all of this work. Traveling and reading voraciously,
Guerrero continually engages the histories of culture in the United States,
Latin America, and Europe, culling images and ideas for his art.
Guerrero’s earliest work reflects his experience at the Chouinard
Art Institute (now the California Institute of the Arts) in Los Angeles,
a dynamic school that encouraged diverse perspectives. At Chouinard, inspired
by socially engaged Pop Art and movements emphasizing language and the
unconscious such as Dada, Surrealism, and California Funk Art, Guerrero
used photography and unconventional sculptural materials to explore the
boundaries of art and his own identity. Rotating Yaqui Mask (1973), a
mask made by Yaqui Indians native to northern Mexico attached to an electric
motor, reflect the freewheeling, hybrid spirit defining Guerrero’s
work in the 1970’s. the artist, who is Mexican-American and part
Tarahumara and Yaqui Indian, uses contemporary electrical machinery to
reanimate the mask, which he imagines was once worn in a ritual dance.
In the 1980’s, Guerrero shifted his focus from intellectual experimentation
to a more emotional, allegorical style, creating numerous paintings incorporating
text and found objects, as well as prints and artist’s books, many
containing his own writings. In 1984, the artist, always an accomplished
draftsman, decide to master a traditional, representational mode and spent
six months in Oaxaca, Mexico, teaching himself the principles of oil painting.
Through this medium, Guerrero expanded his ability to communicate his
views of the world and to create complex symbolic images.
The extended series, “Aspectos de la vida nocturna de Tijuana, B.C./
Aspects of the Nightlife of Tijuana, Baja California,” begun in
1989, best represents the documentary strain in Guerrero’s work.
Aware that Tijuana’s La Coahuila red light district would likely
change dramatically as the city grew more prosperous, the artist set out
to depict whet he calls “the unique history, textures, and colors”
of its bars and dnace halls. Like a modern-day Toulouse Lautrec, Guerrero
roamed La Coahuila capturing the drinkers, dancers, johns, and prostitutes
in quick sketches that he later transformed into paintings celebrating
the district’s lurid excitement.
By the early 1990’s, Guerrero had moved to blending observed and
invented imager, creating allegories of the history of the Americas. The
Black Hills of Dakota (1992), an image of one car jump-starting another
in a desolate landscape underneath a cloud formation resembling a her
os stampeding buffalo, commemorates a chance meeting with two Native American
women and their children near the site of the Wounded Knee massacre on
a driving trip through South Dakota. The 1995 series “The Conquest
of the Americas,” recounts the six major Spanish expeditions in
the America in the 16th century by overlaying an image of Spanish painter
Diego Velasquez’s famous Venus of the Mirror (1649-51)--a female
nude that Guerrero believes symbolizes the hubris of the Spanish empire
at its apex- with the maps and traveling impressions of the colonizers
as well as imagery of indigenous peoples.
Other recent works use imagery drawn from cinema to comment on society.
Petroleo en Nica/Oil in Nicaragua (1993) conceives of the dramatic 1990
election in Nicaragua-- which Guerrero observed with a group of actors
and musician from the United States--as a B-movie, complete with a “grand
constellation of stars.” including Daniel Ortega, Violeta Chamorro,
Bianca Jagger, and Jackson Brown. And Poco a poquito/Little by Little
(1993) reenvisions a well-known 1940 painting of a romantic couple by
Mexican painter Jesus Helguera as the closing credits for an imaginary
film, creating a sentimental memorial for an idea of Mexican culture,
which--if it ever really existed-- is being eroded by the inexorable Americanization
of the country.
Most recently, the 12 painting work Calles de Mexico/streets of Mexico
City (1993-1998) places Guerrero’s experiences and acquaintances
in the metropolis within a grand history., Each given a different volume
or tomo number, the individual images represent location along the city’s
main street, the Paseo de la Reforma. In the series, historic figures
such as as photographer Tina Modotti and comic actor Cantinflas coexist
with U.S. tourist and cab drivers to create a dreamlike vision of the
life of the second largest city in the world.
Guerrero’s search for images, ideas , and experiences has taken
him to among countless other places, Managua, Madrid, Berlin, Tangiers,
and an Iowa farmstead, An unreformed romantic, he instinctively seeks
out the beautiful, the dramatic, and the tragic, stating, “Hatred,
passion, love a city, a continent- these may all be seen as iconic art
objects.” Like the 15th century Spanish explorer, Juan de Cardenas,
Guerrero is an explorer. But the territory he explores is largely intangible.
It is the tumult of history and culture clashes that have shaped the Americas
and the globe during the 500 years since Columbus. The problems and marvelous
secrets Guerrero reveals to us are our own.
Toby Kamps
Assistant Curator
Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego
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