Carlos Llerena Aguirre
Fiber and Steel: Anthological
Exhibition
By Manuel Munive Maco
5ta Bienal Internacional de Grabado, Lima,
Perú
ICPNA
ICPNA
Carlos Llerena Aguirre had left for the United States in the late seventies, shortly after seeing his career as a law student at Universidad Nacional Federico Villarreal in Lima. It
made it difficult for us to be aware of his artistic process. For this reason,
the exhibition Fibra y Acero is a true revelation for both the Lima
public and for the Peruvian critics and curators active during the last 20
years. At least it has been like this for those who write, that until the
middle of 2015 I was unaware of Carlos' work and I was lucky to be personally
invited by the artist to write a text for the catalog that has a large
selection of his graphic production, which together to the anthological sample,
undoubtedly enriched the programming of the 5th International
Engraving Biennial (5BIG), consolidating it as a relevant instance to
reveal a prolific and rigorous work recorded.
Carlos was patient with me from that first contact and
provided me with the photographs and information necessary to write that brief
text about his work. While reviewing the material I could not stop celebrating
my good luck: I had literally arrived at my desk, a work of high technical
demand, prolific as few and aesthetically coherent.
The first thing that caught my attention was to "discover"
that Llerena Aguirre is probably the only Peruvian engraver who has done a
sustained job as an illustrator of printed media in a market as competitive as
the North American: started in 1973, shortly after moving to New York, this
work lasted more than 20 years. And it was precisely in the pages of the New York
Times where he debuted as an illustrator --- curiously with the picture titled
"Dictador Choro" ---, a job whose exercise lasted until 1996,
taking him to to fulfill assignments in other media such as The Village
Voice, San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, among
others.
This work that took the engraving to the massively printed
page, renewed the link between the text and the image, demands from the artist
several challenges, transporting from naturalistic representation to metaphor
and allegory; from the portrait to the caricature; of the image that moves
tragically to that other one that does it by means of its black humor; from the
surrealist reverie to the stark realism. This is what determined that Llerena's
work is. At the same time that a chronicle of the universal history of the last
decades, a sort of "binnacle" of the engraver of the late twentieth
century: in his xylographs and linoleum we find problems such as drug addiction
(Heroine, 1974), Euthanasia (1975), The Cold War ---
Allegorized in Communism versus Imperialism (1977) - Terrorism
(Paris bombed, 1978), Latin American dictatorships, oil speculation. The
nuclear threat (Nuclear plant, 1982), the war industry (F16,
1983) or the war (Bosnia, 1991); and also with characters of art and
culture, with particular emphasis on music Isaac Stern (1980), Steve
Lag (1981), Igor Stravinsky (1994), etc.
But this professionally
rooted in the American environment did not imply that our artist leaves Peru
but quite the opposite: the distance refines his look, giving him a clarividence
about the characters, locations and motives that synthesize our culture. As one
piece from 1981 shows, the Qero’s Varayok or the most recent Views of
Machu Picchu (2011). Interestingly, once again the music and its performers
will constitute the theme and decidedly Peruvian characters of the work of
Llerena Aguirre: La Antara de Urcos (1975), The enchanted harp (1981),
Antara (1985), Guardian ancestor, (1995) or Red Chested Wanchako
(2011)[1].
It is in these prints that the engraver seems to make a tribute to the
indigenista spirit: the detail displayed in reproducing the quality of the
skin, the clothing and the instruments represented. They denote a special
empathy that the spectators feel like admiration and fervor.
“In fact I have visited Peru annually for two months for
40 years, traveling with backpacker Cuzco, Arequipa, Apurímac, Huancavelica,
Ayacucho, Madre de Dios, the Amazonas, etc. If you multiply those months by four
decades it means that I was in Peru seven additional years. I have seen and
experienced the terrorism of our land, "
The artist revealed in an e-mail of February 2016
Precisely the terrorism that was one step away from
disintegrating as a country is also part of the repertoire of images of Carlos
Llerena Aguirre, particularly The Miracle (1991), xylography that
represents an anguished Golgotha that gathers at the feet of the Crucified -?
Taytacha of the Earthquakes ? - or hooded and musicians. In the same
way, the paradoxes of the Conquest are cryptically allegorized in engravings
such as Transculturation 1 (1994) and Transculturation 2 (1996),
through the inclusion of an "Archangel Arcabucero", a
characteristic iconography of Cusco’s painting style. Virreynal in the first one
and the representation of the ruins of a "Huaca" Chimu, in the
last.
The humanist - and certainly erudite - look of Llerena
Aguirre acquires an ecological specialty in recent times, punctually in the
monumental woodcuts that he made during a residency for artist in the Venice
Printmaking Studio large format workshop in 2014. In which It represents
the most beautiful examples of the fauna of the planet, several of them totemic
animals for the original cultures of America and precisely those that are in
danger of extinction these days.
Testimony of that "erudite" and
"humanist" look we just mentioned is the remarkable book / object
titled Future Dreams, made during his residency at the Franz Masareel
Centrum (Belgium) in 1988 and now part of the collection of the Museum
of Art Contemporary of Lima. l The evident xylographic imprint of these
pieces speaks of Llerena Aguirre's knowledge of the tradition of modern
European woodcut and the selection of the thematic motifs stand out for their
accurate intuition: terrorism, natural disasters and the danger of climate
change as well as poetry, love and hope are presented as cards of the same
deck.
A couple of months before opening the
anthological exhibition that we discussed, Llerena Aguirre had made an Artist
Residence in TAKT Berlin, with the purpose of creating a book / object
consisting of 30 prints whose theme is the human condition. The images were
conceived, drawn and carved in TAKT and printed in the prestigious BBK
Berlin Printmakers Workshop that works in the old Art Center Kunstquartier
Bethanien.
[1]
It is not by chance then that he himself is a
musician, that he is a member of the Inca Spirit group and has won
dozens of distinctions - "Official selections" - as a video artist and as an ethnographic documentary maker a short time ago.
