By Greg Beal
Stepping into U.T.'s Huntington Gallery, I found myself confronting a slight, shimmering arrow, a silver- blue metallic wall sculpture that beckoned me onward into a dazzling exhibit of contemporary Latin American Art Astoundingly, this show has been culled entirely from the University's permanent collection of art. Exuding energy and delight as well as a socio-political awareness, the textured canvasses swell in a rhythm of furious colors (though unfortunately the exhibit is now only half its original self, the upstairs graphics having been recently removed).
If there were a single piece that could convey the essence of the exhibit, it might be Venezuelan Jose Davila's "I am the Son of the Windowcleaner who appeared from the Abyss." With its floating surreal tableaux, separate and yet ever-connected, Davila's canvass overwhelms the eye as it plays at once into the painterly visions of de Chirico and Orozco and the literary dreamscapes of Borges and Marquez.
Other favorites of mine include: Antonio Segui's "Napoleon," seemingly a reaction to American Larry Rivers' reaction to David's 1804 portrait of the French general; Jose Aguilar's "Iabacaria," with its day-glow words leaping out from a dark ground; Alfredo Castenada's "La Afficcion de San Marcos," which nods to superrealism in an eerie sort of way; and Nemesio Antunez' "Estadio Negro," a chill memory of the dread days that marked the end of the Allende regime in Chile.
Throughout the exhibit raptured, faceless portraits stare out, lost in the reality of Latin America in the third quarter of the 20th Century, when change that once seemed near at hand now seems far distant. Within the playful context that characterizes many of these works, vivid and terrifying glimpses of repression and subjugation surface again and again.
The exhibit of contemporary Latin American art runs through September 13 at the Huntington Art Gallery at the corner of 23rd and San Jacinto on the U.T. campus.