Álvaro Oyarzún — Dessins — Catherine Putman Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: January 29 → March 19, 2011

The Catherine Putman gallery presents Álvaro Oyarzún’s first solo show in France since 15 years. Some of his work was recently shown in the collective exhibition « extracto », dedicated to contemporary drawings of south american artists (March-May 2010).

Chilean but Francophile, Álvaro Oyarzún is a self-taught artist. He was born in 1960 in Santiago de Chile, where he lives and works. He participated in numerous collective and solo exhibitions, in galleries, museums, biennials (Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton in Paris ; MUSAC in León, Spain ; Mercosul Biennial in Porto Alegre, Brasil ; Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation in Miami ; Kunsthalle, Berlin…).

Álvaro Oyarzún constantly produces endless series of drawings made with rotring on papers of every shape, size and color, then assembled with no fear of narrative excess. Those hundreds of stories are put together without apparent order, and one could easily think of his work as an abstract and cloudy landscape. But, by stepping in closer, their cryptic thematic relationships unveil and become somewhat obvious.

One really needs to get closer and to look at the details to understand the way Álvaro Oyarzún explores the arbitrary and ruptured nature of our own existence. Dismembered and mutilated bodies with serene and impassive faces though are drifting in imaginary spaces ; lovers are looking at each other smiling, regardless of the fact that their heads are cut off — this story is entitled « Love at first sight ».

Álvaro Oyarzún reinterprets and analyses the aesthetic of the world surrounding him using the anachronism as well as a sharp sense of irony ; he creates parallels between the crisis of art and an artist’s personal breakdown. The chilean artist considers caricature and self-mockery as analysis tools to question the artist’s character, helplessly facing the contemporary art world and its contradictions. Books and critical essays by art historians are drifting among the bodies to remind us of the crisis which the artist’s character is going through, as he is exposed to time and variability.

Some of Alvaro Oyarzun’s large drawings on tracing paper will be shown at « Tous cannibales ? Je te mange, tu me manges », an exhibition standing at La Maison Rouge in Paris from February 10th to May 15th 2011, then at Me Collectors Room Berlin from May 28th to September 18th 2011.