Our represented artist Carlos Gallardo takes part in the group show Artistas del Desplazamiento, exhibition that examines the avant-garde of Chilean art of the 1980s and its displacements in printmaking that emerged at the Art School of the Universidad Católica.
The exhibition features works by Alicia Villarreal, Silvio Paredes, Arturo Duclos, Mario Soro and Carlos Gallardo. The show is the result of the research of the artist Jorge Padilla, academic at Universidad Católica and curator of the exhibition, who for years studied the artists who formed an unprecedented avant-garde collective, developed amid the dictatorship in the printmaking workshops directed by Eduardo Vilches, 2019 National Art Prize laureate.
The artistic term "displacement" is used by the critic Nelly Richard to refer to the artistic practices developed by this group of creators at the Escuela de Arte UC, then located at the Campus Lo Contador in Pedro de Valdivia Norte, Providencia, Santiago. Through the interventions performed by the students of Eduardo Vilches and his assistant, Carlos Gallardo, the group gained strength at a moment of intellectual bubbling, being invited by Nelly Richard herself to be part of the Chilean envoy to the Paris Biennial of 1982.
The visual operations of these artists were characterised by a rejection of the academic canon, a critical attitude towards the political moment and the development of practices that displaced printmaking. In 1983 the group began to disperse, and its artists followed different paths, always appealing to this avant-garde imprint in different disciplines. The group was later referenced by the Escena de Avanzada movement in Richard's book Margins and Institutions, published in Australia in 1985.
Carlos Gallardo participates with his diptych Abatido, a performance and registry piece that belongs to his historical series A la Carne de Chile (1978-1983), executed in 1981 at the La Cisterna Slaughterhouse in Santiago.
For the curator, the production of this group of artists made fundamental contributions to the development of the language, aesthetic and political reflection of the period, based on works that for the most part had not been exhibited before. The exhibition rescues part of these important events in the history of Chilean art, making visible works from the time, together with records of interventions and documentation that Jorge Padilla has found in his research process.
Artistas del Desplazamiento will be on view from 16 June to 15 July at Galería Artespacio (Alonso de Córdova 2600, Vitacura) in Santiago.
