ROBERTO HUARCAYA'S PHOTOGRAPHIC EXPERIMENTATION IN PINTA PArC 2023

With a prominent presence in multiple spaces of the fair, Rolf Art presents exclusively the work of one of the most distinguished and committed contemporary artists of Peru: Roberto Huarcaya (1959), exhibiting a selection of his monumental photograms of the Amazogramas and Danzas Andinas series, visual representations of the regions of Peru and the Andean culture.

With a site-specific project in the atrium of Casa Prado ­–a leading institutional space at the entrance of the fair– Rolf Art presents a colossal monumental-scale photogram from the Amazogramas series (2014- 2020). The piece, more than 15 meters long, pays homage to the Amazon rainforest through a process by which the natural environment produces a photographic representation of itself. Made at night in Bahuaja Sonene, a nature reserve in the Amazon rainforest of Peru, this piece involved unfolding a 90-meter-long photosensitive paper through the dense foliage of the jungle, whose forms were projected onto the paper with the help of a small flash and the light of the full moon. The photographic images were developed using water from a nearby river, which added mineral sediments and pigments to the surface of the work.

In the Solo/Duo Projects section –dedicated to contemporary artists who insist on rethinking modernisms under the prism of their practices– under the curatorship of Florencia Battiti, Rolf Art's proposal brings together a careful selection of unpublished medium-format pieces from the series Danzas Andinas (2018-2020), which portray a group of dancers, manually intervened by the artist with Marrón Van Dyke. Recognized by Unesco in 2010 as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, this traditional dance of Andean culture derives its name, Danza de las Tijeras, from the two polished metal blades, resembling those of a pair of scissors, that the dancers interlock in a movement of resistance against Spanish domination.

The exhibited pieces were made through a complex process of photograms emulsified with Van Dyke Brown pigment, on which the artist based pre-Columbian fabrics more than 1000 years old to transfer the texture, shape and density of the original textiles on the bodies of the dancers, as if they were dressing hundreds of years ago to go out and dance the dance against the conquest.

The proposal is completed with another site-specific project in the hall on the second floor of Casa Prado, where a photogram composed of 6 pieces of 1 x 2.10 meters each, portraying a group of Andean musicians that make up the traditional Yawarfiesta festival in Koyurqui, Abancay, will be exhibited.

Finally, within the framework of Open Files –a cycle of videos focused on artists and their works– which is part of the Media Point section produced by Verónica Santalla, a video about the Huarcaya tranajo produced especially for Pinta PArC 2023 will be presented.

Roberto Huarcaya (1959) graduated in Psychology at the Catholic University of Peru, studied Film at the Italian Institute of Culture and Photography at the Centro del Video y la Imagen (Madrid, 1989), year in which he began to devote himself to photography. He is a professor of photography at the University of Lima (1990-1993), at the Gaudí Institute (Lima, 1993-1997) and at the Centro de la Fotografía, now Centro de la Imagen de Lima, since 1999, of which he was founder and director until July 2022.

Since his appearance on the visual arts scene, he has stood out for the ambition of his projects, in which the photographic medium has often been united with other creative media in combinations of great solvency. Huarcaya has always been interested in the real as a space for creation. His proposals have often revolved powerfully around the construction of individual and collective identity in the face of situations ranging from the banal-daily, through the erotic as a turning point of freedom, to reach the political plane.

Pinta PArC, Peru Contemporary Art.

April 19 to 23, 2023.

Casa Prado. Av. 28 de Julio 878, Miraflores, Lima, Peru.