Perú: Ojo Andino Perú

Paisajes del sur (2015) by Alberto Gayoso Diaz

At what point did this change of perspective on the plastic arts take place? I am not able to give a precise date, but there are some clear signs that may have propitiated the change. One is the huge growth, at least in relation to the size of the local mar- ket, of the supply and demand of artistic-visual works. Factors such as general economic expansion, the increase of the creative industries and the gradual development of a common language with visual artists and consumers of their products have contrib- uted to this growth.

Frontera (2015) by Alejandro Jaime Carbonel

Another sign was the collapse of the divisions between plastic genres that caused controversy at the moment, but it was help- ful for the organization of the activity. There was also a mixing up of the traditions that are passed from hand to hand profoundly changing their original meaning. Later on there was a capital- ist transformation of the art market (though the benefits of an ancient and recognized name continue to influence things con- siderably) which, however, did not become completely capitalist. The multiplication of available spaces (screens, advertisements, people, private walls, electronic flow etc.) should also be remem- bered. And, on a purely formal plane, you cannot ignore the de- creased distance between creative schools.

Paseante (2015) by Demetrio William Pinillos

All the phenomena mentioned in the previous two paragraphs have produced a creative variety that is not easy to grasp at first glance. Especially because we are used to our old way of looking at contradictive facts such as the figurative/abstract, craft/artistic, indigenous/cosmopolitan, ancient/modern. Today the Peruvian visual arts are not inspired by these models though they contain some transition elements such as the presence of new teachers with original paths or processing resulting from a reworking of schools that have disappeared. In any case, the most significant aspect is that of the forces of any age that are constantly emerging: eclectic visual proposals freed from the yoke of a predetermined authority while artists who move at the border of the visual are still rising.

Camino a huaraz perù ‘72 (2015) by Fernando La Rosa

In this more modern area of Peruvian visual arts the quality (another concept that no longer has the clout it once had as sometimes happens regarding the concept of originality) gives the impression of being equally distributed, at least in the last twenty years or so. By quality we mean phenomena such as the empowerment of the image submitted by each plastic artist and the intensification of their character's personal perception of the artistic. Working backwards, the concept and practice of school such as pedagogy and discipline of that which was a creative and collective space of changes, has become an area of risk today. It has gone from a period of human groups to a period of individu- ality. Many have seen the height of the disciplines of drawing, photography and video in this change.

Retrato de Luciano Benetton (2015) by Humberto Aquino

We return thusly to the situation of continuity and divisions. Forty years ago it was possible to see Peruvian plastic art divided into three different spaces: Pre-Inca plastic art, Andean crafts and art of Western origin1. Later, it was therefore possible to see the Peruvian plastic art of the twentieth century as the succession of three stages: firstly, the borders with the outside through which all artistic import would pass; second, the boundaries between the different parts of our inner selves that our artistic effort has to go through to meet the realities of the society and, finally, the vogue of the cities as spaces of affirmation of local cosmopolitanisms. In the four decades since the time in which this three parts view prevailed, some important things have happened that have changed the landscape: the parts concerning western influence and craftsmanship (rather, semi-western, that which Rodrigo Montoya would define as "recreated Andean") of the visual arts had a rapid evolution, on the one hand, and gradual, on the other; archaeological discoveries increased and with them the findings of artifacts of a great level of the pre-Inca period multiplied, they diverged and began to be considered from an increasingly aesthetic and less historicist prospective (the Pre-Columbian Museum of Plaza de las Nazarenas in Cusco is a good example).

c79 (2015) by Jairo Robinson

Martín Rodríguez Gaona was dedicated to post-modernism to give expression to the new visual times: "although Lauer was thirty years ahead in the diagnosis, the direction of his intuition was accurate. And beyond the 'popular overflow' (Andean im- migration in the once stately Lima) marking the current pace of Peruvian society, perhaps only from the post-modern break with its celebration of diversity and new formats, can you realize the existence of the "Three large autonomous spaces of Peruvian culture: pre-Incan art, folk crafts and the republican tradition of painting."2. He is right to the extent that he suggests that the work of Lauer has inevitably been neutralized by the impossibility of classifying the field of plastic arts. The path of Gaona obliges us to name a few. Some, not all are mentioned in this book. Those present today are survivors of another era whose works retain validity and freshness (the best known case is that of Fernando de Szyszlo), artists who are dead but recovered from oblivion for artworks that only recently have begun to be known (Jorge Eduardo Eielson, Jorge Piqueras and, finally, Regina Aprijaskis); artists who are currently active in the field of plastic arts, ironic and transformers (Juan Javier Salazar, Kino Ganoza-Cherman); explorers searching for particularly new niches regarding themes, or form (Piero Quijano, Cristina Planas, Sandra Gamarra).

Chica material (2015) by John Chauca Laurente

Another way to describe the new times of the plastic arts is to consider that a national system for art galleries has finally emerged as a pillar of the market of plastic art, a system, how- ever, that compared to the outer one is still backward and that there is therefore still an imbalance between the interior of the country and the rest of the world. What galleries did was to pro- pose or to confirm people like Tola, Ramiro Llona, Ricardo Wiesse and, finally, Christian Bendayan. The output on the international market has been on the agenda since the early 90s, however, it has not been possible to realize anything, except for very few individual cases. Why? Because the entrepreneurial resources of the artistic medium are also in a condition of backwardness, a situation which in turn derives from something that we can call "endovisuality", a concept that refers to the persistence of obses- sions with the national, the endogenous form. As for the galler- ies, their success is the product of good economic health of the country's construction boom (new professional or trade success- es with new walls for new paintings). Even during the economic crisis of the '80s the business world had buoyed the fragile art market. After the crisis, it helped the market to move on.

Untitled (2015) by Jose Antonio Bao Alonso

But many things have happened outside of the galleries. There is an evident politicization of content that responds to the times; it is generational, it isn’t an artistic movement, but an occasional artistic impulse; it coincides with the emergence of individuality and it connects people who agree on specific initiatives, but it is not about particular works. For example, a political-plastic act like "Lava la bandera" (a protest against Alberto Fujimori in 2000) came to focus on the so-called cycle of the flag that was visu- ally sent off by Moico Yaker, Susana Torres and later by Eduardo Tokeshi and others. Already years before figurativism had marked its return to the forefront with Tilsa Tsuchiya and Tola, but there were "plastic political artists" such as Torres or those of the Colec- tivo Sociedad Civil ("Put garbage in the garbage"), and in a sense the ironic actors like Salazar or Quijano there to emphasize the significance of this return.

Visiones y senales andinas 2 (2015) by Luis Arias Vera

Perhaps the phenomenon of greatest impact in the field of plastic arts in recent decades have been retrospectives. It has been the recovery of the great figures of the first half of the past century with known works, but inadequately exhibited in museums and largely submerged in special collections. Artists like Mario Urteaga, the sisters of Izcue, Sérvulo Gutiérezo, Tilsa Tsuchiya or Vinatea Reinoso. Retrospectives also dealt with liv- ing artists. Of the ten painters from Peruvian history preferred by the people according to a survey conducted in 1980 by the Hueso Humero magazine, seven artists were from the first part of the twentieth century and only Szyszlo was (and still is) alive. The decision to list retrospectives was more or less on the basis of this information. The emergence of a large amount of works of art hitherto unknown to young plastic artists produced a vi- sual information bomb, a sort of generational overlap that was, at the same time, conceptual. The great retrospectives were a way, we do not know to what extent in a conscious sense, to break with the past of the plastic arts in the field of the orga- nization of the profession, essentially to put the past behind us. The social anchorage at that time were events such as the defeat of the Sendero Luminoso movement, hyperinflation and statism, all the things that we wanted to leave behind which is what then happened. This seems to be a history of the joints between the XX and XXI centuries that begins to redefine the boundaries between categories parallel to the artistic such as the bourgeois and the popular, the public and the private, the ancient and the modern, and in turn, the dividing lines between the tripartite spaces to which I referred earlier. It just seemed that the change had for- gotten the dynamics of the relationship between Lima and the regions and between the whole country and the foreign market. Does this situation mark the end of something? Perhaps we are experiencing the effects of modernization and, at the same time, the resistance to modernization and some new distortions. For example, from the scarcity of galleries that marked art for almost a century, we have moved to a shortage of critics capable of sys- tematically assessing that which the galleries exhibit. Many exhi- bitions are held without arousing the slightest critical comment.

Untitled (2015) by Luz Negib

One feature worth noting is that the intensity of the great international success, that for one of its aspects has represented a membership within the classification of the best Latin American plastic art, has rewarded Peruvian plastic artists in a marginal way. Few people have been able to achieve the worldwide fame and prestige and no one at the level of Fernando Botero, Wilfredo Lam, Diego Rivera and Rufino Tamayo. The structures of international promotion and distribution of Peruvian plastic art began to be conceived after 2000 and this delay is perhaps a further distortion. Before the ‘80s the role of a painter was not really important in the sense that the ideological or social or professional principles that they embodied were given much more weight. When the result was a detached or even famous personal image, it was taken for granted that the deeper importance resided in someone belonging to a current, to a style, possibly to a manifesto. Over the years, things changed and the figure of the visual creator be- gan to be important in and of itself as the visual arts had become a social representation in real time, a process that inevitably be- gins with the artist himself. This involved much more individual space for visual artists.

Woman (2015) by Miguel Aguirre

In 1984 the situation of Peruvian plastic art at the end of the twentieth century could be summarized in three key battles: "One for the color (which replaces the theme as an element of the classification of the work), one for the freedom to experi- ment (with an emphasis on individual expression that seeks to replace the nationalist impulse) and a third for the development of plastic thought"3. The third battle is still an ongoing project in which a new phase of growth of museography stands out.

horror vacui (2016) by Paolo Vigo Borjas

The common denominator of the panorama of the newest plas- tic arts in Peru is located in the confluence of a sophisticated social concern with a refinement of the craft as foreshadowed in its own way from the work of Javier Salazar in previous decades. The most interesting creators are almost all within this model. A good example, with a work on the edge of conceptualism, is represented by Alejandro Jaime who explores what have been called "territorial changes on a vast scale - produced from mining and farming". Another important aspect is the sharp and original social commentary with the widespread tendency to substitute humor with sarcasm. Two artists who do it with great quality are Claudia Coca and Carolina Estrada, the latter with the tools of design and craftsmanship. Today the encounters between art, design and methods of practical application (fashion, architecture, advertising, manufacturing) practiced by plastic artists of all kinds are particularly vivid. In relation to this, the three-dimen- sional, digital and crystal clear pieces of Sebastián Burga are, as the same states, comments on the "aesthetics of the imported". Moreover, many young people are emerging on the market fol- lowing two or more parallel and differentiated lines of participa- tion. Among those, we can obviously see the lovers of traditional crafts. For example, Paloma Álvarez who introduces sewing and other forms of women's work in her paintings.