Pio Pulido: Symbols of Precarious Balance
Dougherty Arts Center,
Through November 30
Is the Pio Pulido exhibition a solo exhibition? The paintings by this Mexico City native span diverse styles, symbols, and artists. In the lobby of the Dougherty Arts Center, a realistic image of Big Bend hangs between a contorted woman and a surreal plant; opposite, an abstraction has the message: “When I feel I have to force my smile, I know it’s time to go home,” printed on it. Unity could come from the materials (primarily acrylic on paper), but Technicolor and different gloss finishes give the impression of diversity here, too.
Brave enough to use such symbols as the butterfly, the flower, the heart, the egg, and the dove, Pulido proves wily enough to find new energies in these tired subjects. In Metamorphosis for Love, the artist emphasizes the butterfly’s insect features, such as the black keratin bones of the wing. Artists and poets who see nature as a beauty pageant forget the butterfly’s other qualities. Pulido’s butterfly devours flowers and scorns the vulnerable caterpillar.
In Disconnection, Pulido invents his own symbols centered on an adobe window frame in rural Mexico. A pear-shaped figure, comprised of what might be hair, flames, or petals, sits on the window sill, almost filling the frame. At its base, the pear bears a black orifice. Rising from the unseen floor, something resembling a stalk comes close but never enters the orifice. Meanwhile, a modem or telephone cable has slung itself through the glassless window. Entangled with the stalk, the cable hangs limp below the organic figure, awaiting a socket. Is this a tentacle of the Internet encroaching on an organic scene? Is this a challenge to macho Mexico? Significant parts of Salvador Dali pull the eye to four of the larger pictures. Pulido contours upland Mexico under a vivid sky, as photographic as Dali’s scenery. He also paints natural subjects in supernatural positions: Eggs containing chessboards, frozen butterflies and mutant corn come on the same menu in these four paintings. One of them, Legacy of Genetic Engineering, features a plant flowering at the bud and rotting at the root. One butterfly falls toward the ground, choked by the flower. On the ground, butterfly carcasses and a black fish with corn sprouting out of its ear lie on either side of a mutated caterpillar. The caterpillar arches its back like a roaring lion. On the horizon, a plane leads a cloud of pesticide toward the volcanic mountains. Human destruction of nature returns in Pulido’s Seven Sins for the East Side. The gluttony of the power plant, the greed of the Exxon containers, and the wrath of the motorways appear behind the dead fish in Austin’s Town Lake.
Although they feel like a rainbow compilation, these paintings unify as a distilled vision of nature’s balance. This exhibition will be enjoyed by anyone with a social conscience; it should also be seen by lawmakers and oilmen.
This article appears in November 24 • 2000.