VISIONS OF THE PRESENT
The painter is a sort of visionary who must allow himself to be carried away by bright and dark images, by the furore of chance or by a complex articulation of memories, desires and impulses that operate to make an image fall on the screen, and then, through a visual technology, turn that image into a painting.
Coco González Lohse, from the street cavern and his current studio in the Yungay neighbourhood, from his cranial vault, projects images in the prime of their iconicity onto canvas or a wall. Some landscapes, painted or from memories, personal or collective, have been crystallising on different surfaces since the mid-eighties. In this case, in the urgent and challenging present we live in, this series of works is a visual reaction, an answer or a silent question with few words.
The images in this report of the present come as precognitions, as knowledge whose keys escape us because of the obviousness of their statement, or because they are recorded in a meta-painting, still in a state of blindness, which is interwoven between the images and the apparent randomness of their elaboration. Images from the street, from the media or art, coexist as previews with themselves, those that are not yet in circulation; that are there, crouched somewhere in the affections or phobias, about to no longer belong to the author.
Neither the agent nor the PR that inhabit Coco González Lohse will be able to prevent the dark destiny of the painted scenes and words. That is the damnation of the messenger: it makes no difference whether the paintings appeal to reality, nightmare or fantasy. The painter wanders swiftly back and forth, between heroes and tombs, through the Santiago downtown, the virtual web, through the very images that persist or decay, experiencing an unbearable lightness that at the same time delocalises him.
What does Coco talk or paint about? Of the need to live and expand the sparks of lucidity, however strong they may be, between laughter and tears. It's the secret of that humanity, painted or drawn in the diagram, that turns the gallery wall into another collection piece: what connects, the contiguity, the relations between the edges, the topics that multiply in the very gaze that follows the threads of this new visual plot.
Coco González Lohse belongs to a generation dislocated and recomposed since the eighties, possessing a resistant vitalism and with his own life exposed, emptied, with the honesty of someone who wakes up after a late night and begins again.
Now, very sad and very happy Coco, we thank you for assisting us in a time of an increasingly obtuse vision. "Too much reality", you repeat to us. Let us escape in joy for a moment through your brief, interwoven paintings, drawings and objects.
Ramón Castillo, curator.
May 2022.
