THE CROXATTO FACTOR
“… Art is the place where I practice for life. I would do anything within the context of work or art or whatever it was called; that was where all my permission was.”
Linda Montano, Art in Everyday Life (New York, 1981)
In popular lore, the phrase "Tirar la casa por la ventana" ["throwing the house out the window"] refers to a drastic - and probably cathartic - rite in which, through celebration and within a specific spatial and temporal setting, we release everything that has been part of a significant process in our lives. "Throwing the house out the window" can be seen as a personal challenge: we gather the transcendental in the light of a future, generating an energetic flow in pursuit of possible new adventures.
On the occasion of its 10th anniversary, Isabel Croxatto Galería presents La Casa por la Ventana, an inspiring and necessary exhibition. Curated by Carolina Castro, under the motto "Living with Art", 35 artists (represented by the gallery and guests, national and international) were invited to create pieces especially for the occasion.
"From the beginning, the choreographer and cultural manager Isabel Croxatto has proposed to those who have participated in this project to live with art, blurring the boundaries between the space where art is exhibited and the space where art lives", as Castro points out in the text that accompanies the exhibition.
Since its establishment, Isabel Croxatto Galería has outlined a management model that breaks with the formal parameters within which the Chilean art circuit is/was accustomed to rest but is also coherent with the dizzying succession of stylistic impostures, extra-institutional artistic experiences or even the diversification of forms of visual promotion that guide the logics of contemporary artistic production.
In addition to working with artists, theoreticians and collectors, the gallery's activities have gradually expanded to include various international platforms, whether through residency and exhibition projects such as La Embajada or the dynamisation of its exhibition space in the virtual world with the creation of ICG+ in 2020.
Above all, however, La Casa por la Ventana invites us to get to know the vision that has been the driving force behind the project over the last decade.
In a broad sense, the works exhibited in La Casa por la Ventana are configured as multiple systems of representation of the human condition. In one way or another, we are confronted with pieces that emanate secrets, coded messages, incantations and hidden truths. Imaginaries that range from caricature and hyper-realism to those phantasmagorical bodies that manifest themselves from virtual reality share the space with complex processes of visual displacement and ideological condensation.
In Víctor Castillo's work, caricature can operate as a metaphor and verification of a dysfunctional contemporaneity made up of failed promises and capitalist dreams that never materialise. In Sharpy (2023), an enigmatic child vampire evokes a golden age when the illusion of the everyday consisted of good manners and disturbing, beautifully kept secrets.
In Carolina Muñoz's work, this link to the everyday sphere is created through the alienation of the place and the distortion of the figure. With a disposition close to the scenic rictus of Surrealism, the artist deconstructs, layer by layer, any notion of formal linearity that can even be found in certain schools of pictorial abstraction. In La Cita (2023), the viewer's position appears to be lateral and involuntary; the characters do not pose but are captured in a seemingly uncomfortable moment of uncontrol.
In contrast to the urgency of Muñoz's images, Miss Van's now mythical 'Girlie Dolls' exude a calm, vital energy in which sex appeal and sweetness fluidly intertwine to give the image an almost sacred aura. The figure in Portrait with Lagoon Blue Hair (2023) is presented in a headdress of tassels, feathers and hair. The sensation is that of a process of transformation or evocation of a spirit.
Chiachio & Giannone's geometric compositions based on bits of fabric on old handkerchiefs and napkins (Doméstico 023 - Autorretrato, 2020) are proposed as representations of a deconstructed masculinity in the arena of heteronormative culture.
Historically, within the dominant culture, those artistic experiences that emerge from the margins to tell us about their future face the pressure of silence or the seduction of displacing their referential frameworks into the space of the cryptic. In the series to which this work belongs, the artists poetically formulate the reverse exercise: the accessory is no longer silent, and its use - or possibilities - are metaphorically recoded, offering the viewer a rich field of associations that appeal to their own experiences and histories.
The Chilean flag is a recurring image in Paloma Castillo's embroideries. A demystifying figure, the flag acts as a necessary grounding cable, reminding us where we are and where we are going. For this exhibition, the artist presents two, a grey and a tricolour. In both, the national symbol has been inverted, and the star omitted.
In Antes (2023), we see the tragic silhouette of the cartoon of the Coyote chasing the Roadrunner almost 'stamped' on the surface of the embroidery. The range of greys evokes a black-and-white television past, a time of harsh silences and complex endings. Meanwhile, in Presente (2023), the main tragic figure is the emoticon we use in our digital conversations to save words when ideas are lacking. The simulation is completed when we notice that in one corner of the composition, Paloma has included the icons that indicate the battery and connection status of the mobile phone.
By using different linguistic figures, Castillo re-signifies the meanings of the images. Presente can refer to an identification of the now, to a filter for looking at our reality, but also to the need for our voice when it comes to marking our reality.
During the 2019 social outbreak, Johans Peñaloza roamed the city's devastated streets, experiencing and recording the power of destruction. The pictorial work that emerged from this exploration depicts these fleeting and unfinished scenes of civil unrest. In Ensamblaje Territorial (2023), the infamous monument at the epicentre of the popular protest burns, showing the marks of discontent and how the landscape it contains is transformed by the brushstroke into the ashes of an uncomfortable past. In contrast to the classical and anodyne landscape painting that absorbs our sensibility, Peñaloza proposes a representation of transitory moments and places that are condemned to never be the same again.
A subtext for Fernanda Núñez's works Epílogo Blanco (2023) and Epílogo Negro (2023) could be 'My dreams can be your nightmares'. Two wooden constructions of the same size present two domestic scenes made of plasticine. Identical, mischievously mirrored, the plots unfold in both tableaux in the same rooms, but with "certain differences": while in the white room, we see four inhabitants, in the black one, we see ten; while in the first room, each space seems to breathe harmony, in the other we can perceive claustrophobia.
What we are shown are two ways of approaching the idea of quality of life, two living situations that take place simultaneously in different areas of the same city. In her work, the artist examines the contemporary human condition through the spaces we occupy; her dioramas are a brutal reflection on the pyramidal relationships that unfold in our society and how they are the expression of disparate forces of power.
Nostalgia and parody intersect, become accomplices and contradict each other in Fabio Castro's work, which consists of sculptures and graphics that recall the aesthetics of early 20th-century political propaganda.
Decap (2023) comprises a super-polished bronze soda cap with the hammer and sickle symbol undercut. The very fashionable 'hipster' melancholy for the great ideological systems of modernity is revealed as an empty rupture in a socio-cultural system where the value of objects is more important than the actual effectiveness of a programme. Under Castro's sceptical gaze, the rehashes of capitalism - which become zones of cannibalisation of utopian forms - suddenly become the recipients of the great egos of history.
In her premise, "Living with Art", Isabel Croxatto presents the viewer with an optimistic declaration of principles about the relevance and necessity of art in the secular space. Although seductive, the invitation presents the viewer with a challenge not only to discover but also to participate in the process of rethinking the function of artistic work. The works invited to La Casa por la Ventana circulate and are produced in the context of social and cultural resignification.
Throughout these ten years, Croxatto has scrutinised the dense and overcrowded field of the plastic arts to construct a space with its physiognomy, often venturing into unknown territory and accepting the risk of departing from safe formulas. Perhaps the place we live in is the first space for change.
Leonardo Casas
July 2023
