Guillermo Lorca - Fine Art Prints
Since what we could call “the cancellation of Balthus” (as the Polish painter Balthasar Klossowsky is known), painters who make representations and allegories of girls and young women are considered brave at best, reckless at least. They inhabit and explore the unstable border of what is considered “socially permitted.” But what permitted means? Artistic practices do not always obey the moral correctness of their time; ideology can also be defined as the set of ethical values and criteria of truth that change over time. In all geographies and eras there have been artists who question our ideas of what is correct, valid and true. An artistic exploration of value does not necessarily invite us to stay where we are, but rather pushes us towards new ways of being and thinking.
Guillermo Lorca not only rushes into the field of these symbols, but also detonates the repertoire of the unconscious and nourishes it with a pictorial richness that surprises and intrigues from the first glance. The images are clear, he designs diaphanous lights that illuminate everything without sacrificing the depth of the chiaroscuros –when there are any, which exist a lot within the human psyche–. In his case, the girls are an archetype that represents the painter himself in his vulnerability, vitality and promise of the future.
Lorca's work occupies a special place in the practice of contemporary surrealism, much like Salvador Dalí: it is not an art of mechanisms or automatisms. Although he paints at night or in the early morning, wrapped in drowsiness and drowsiness, the hand and rationality are in charge of each gesture of drawing and color, his skills are at their maximum capacity.
The unconscious and vision sneak in, of course, in the atmosphere of long-worked and studied ideas and intuitions. Each painting is the result of dedicated and careful studies that mature over long periods. To paint a wild boar, a swan, a wolf, many wild boars, swans and wolves have been seen in real life and in the gigantic visual culture of our time. Lorca makes abundant sketches with pencil and with digital technologies, takes many photographs that he catalogues in folders. Once all the decisions of what he wants have been made, he proceeds to paint. Even here certain elements can change, but they are adjustments, not restructurings. Before his work we find ourselves before the practice of painting as orchestration, not as a gesture.
That same care is preserved in the limited edition reproductions that he makes of some of his pieces, allowing quality and vision to circulate around the world more quickly and widely than a large painting can travel. They are generously sized and long-lasting prints in which the whirlwind of symbols and atmospheres retain their expressive power. With them he continues to shake our conscience, while asking us “what is beyond?”.
Profile
Guillermo Lorca (Santiago de Chile, 1984) is a figurative painter, akin to symbolism and surrealism, widely recognized throughout the world. He completed formal art studies at the SSCC Manquehue School and at the Catholic University of Chile. During that time he was an assistant to the painter Hernán Miranda, with whom he created a pair of large murals (32 and 45 meters long). He soon retired from academic training when he realized that art school is a hostile environment for a figurative painter. In 2006, at the age of 22, he joined the Odd Nerdrum painting academy in Norway, where he developed the painting and composition methods that he uses in his work to this day. His work combines the styles of ancient painting with his contemporary nature, resulting in a timeless but very novel appearance. In 2011 he continued his training in an artist residency in Berlin.
He has held solo and group exhibitions in Santiago de Chile, Mexico City, London, Barcelona, Seoul (Korea), as well as in Turin and Sicily (Italy). Between 2005 and 2009 he created murals in the cities of Ovalle, Concepción and Santiago, where the Baquedano underground station houses six pictorial panels as a project for the Bicentennial of Chilean Independence.
