2018 (BIS) | OFICINA DE PROYECTOS
Installation views, Una noche de verdad dentro de una noche de verano
Solo show, (bis) | Oficina de Proyectos, Cali
April 12 – May 25, 2018
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Penultimate Chilean in New York
Felipe likes a Chilean-style hot-dog that has avocado, mayo, tomato, sauerkraut, melted cheese, salsa Americana, salsa verde and more! All inside a hotdog bun and with a bland sausage, it’s called COMPLETO. It’s a mix-up and an overdose of flavors, all a bit moisty. This excess, confusion and the hope of goodness is a constant within Felipe Mujica’s logic, directly connected to Santiago’s downtown, which is full of soot and grease in the air, which makes it a cousin to many cities in Latin America.
Chilean abstract geometric tradition is dirty and unclear, just like Santiago’s downtown, it has that soot and grease. This flavor is particular and special, if you mix it with the aspiration of being clear and serious, which is a Chilean goal, Chilean fantasy. There was abstract geometric art in Chile yet they never reached the clarity of the Brazilians and Venezuelans. Maybe there was not enough wealth to produce highly finished works? So, the Felipe of my story moved to New York, to learn how they do it there with a budget (Brazil and Venezuela had already decided to become something else).
In New York Felipe realized he preferred Europe, after all, the Germans and the Swiss are more Chilean than the gringos. The artists from the USA are very pragmatic and product producers, they sell their work and their persona, European artists still have time and think in other, rather, more expansive ways… like having curtains that help establish social relations, to have lines on walls that look like many things yet they do not state only one. That way of working is more Chilean, more European, and less gringo.
Hope in positive effects is the basis of Felipe’s work, and that echoes exit with the initial intentions of geometry, as the Russians did creating forms of utopian structure. This echo continues because there is still hope. Sadly, nowadays nothing is straight so we have to eat the whole completo.
Cristóbal Lehyt, Nueva York
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