Believe it or not, I’ve been around. From December 2006 through the first month of 2007 I shared an apartment with four foreign students in Coconut Grove (Florida), one of them was from Korea and the others were from Turkey. It was a pleasant surprise to realize that despite our cultural differences we were able to get along just fine. I have to admit that I had never talked to people from neither of those countries, and it was very interesting to be in a group of individuals from such different backgrounds.
It was very important to be fluent in English, because the only way to communicate with them was through a common language. Although one of them could speak Spanish at a beginner’s level.
I learned to keep an open mind about people that I would have normally considered as “different”. When I first found out that I was going to live with Turkish and Korean undergraduates I have to admit that I was somehow preoccupied. However, after spending some time with them I understood that we weren’t so different after all. I think that should be the key to establish good relationships. After a few days we found out that we had things in common. For example, the Korean student was a comic book collector just like I am. And a couple of the Turkish students were very interested in computer games. There were differences between us, but I decided that none of those differences should cause troubles between us. What I did was try to find what we had in common, to find something that could bring us together instead of focusing on the details that could have driven us apart. My Turkish friends used to have a cup of tea every afternoon, very much like I suppose the British do; occasionally I joined them in this activity that seemed almost like a ritual. They used to go to bed early, so I avoided making noise.
At the time, I remember tasting some of the entrees of the Ritz Carlton-Key Biscayne (a five star, five diamond hotel, and coincidentally one of Paul McCartney’s favorite US establishments), and although they were really good I didn't need to make much of an effort to remember myself eating something better in Peru; however, the difference in prices between the Ritz Carlton and a normal Peruvian restaurant can be quite astronomic, so in the end is not about expensive tastes, it is just about taste. Every time I think of Paul McCartney I think of that specific Ritz Carlton (the cheapest room in 2007 was 600 hundred bucks, but you could easily find rooms above the 10000 mark)… and just today my good friend Bruno Conte Pujalt sent me an email telling me that he had some discounted tickets for the first, and perhaps only, concert that the ex-Beatle will be performing here in Peru.
Rodin Esquejo
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Este lunes se inauguró la muestra de Alex Castañeda, “Deck”, en Corriente Alterna. Se trata de un artista joven pero sumamente talentoso. Desafiando el canon del arte contemporáneo, Castañeda no tiene problemas en buscar inspiración en artistas universales como Rubens o Rembrandt. Su obra se compone de mujeres. El cuerpo femenino adopta aquí diversas posiciones que sirven para desbaratar un status quo ya caduco. Como bien señala Lamas en el texto introductorio de la obra, la mujer ha sido siempre el objeto de deseo (no en términos lacanianos, claro) apropiado por los sujetos que se encontraban en el poder en un momento dado y que encargaban cuadros a los artistas. En este caso, desde el formato mismo –tablas de skate- hasta la reinterpretación lúdica del eros femenino, tamizado mediante máscaras u otras imágenes alegóricas, el concepto del hombre en el poder queda desvirtuado. Castañeda ha sabido aprovechar, incluso, las curvaturas del skate para acomodar tobillos y caras, creando una sensación distinta a la que tendríamos en un lienzo totalmente plano. Estamos, entonces, frente a la obra de un artista prometedor que sin duda nos seguirá sorprendiendo en el futuro.
Durante la noche tuve la oportunidad de brindar con whisky con mi amigo y artista David Rejas (pueden ver una de sus obras en el post del 6 de abril), con quien me quedé conversando algunos minutos. Algo que en las últimas muestras no había sido posible o bien porque yo no tenía tiempo o porque el andaba más ocupado que yo. También estuve conversando con Eduardo Deza, un artista que presentó varios cuadros en la Galería Shock en enero (y un extraordinario autorretrato en el Centro Cultural Ccori Wasi hace casi dos semanas). Ambos comentamos el dominio de la técnica y el óptimo resultado de los cuadros de Castañeda.
A continuación adjunto cuatro viñetas de una nueva historia. Dos de ellas resultarán familiares para los lectores habituales del blog.
Jardín exterior de Dédalo
Galería Lucía de la Puente
Regalo de María Fe (desde Londres)
