Domingo de Lucía
El Anexo. Caracas
The story of carmine red is associated to sex, violence and political struggles. Also to war and drama. The humble cochineal (Dactylopius coccus) that produces it was always alien to the passions it generated. In the 16th century, the Spanish Conquistadores took this pigment of Mexican origin to Europe, where it became the symbol of kings, popes and power.
Domingo de Lucía (Italy, 1950) is an artist, but he also produces industrial elements for artistic painting. For this reason, he has studied the different color states, especially that of carmine red. The point of departure for his research hes been the so-called “standard red”, known by the abbreviation Std which gives origin to the title of the exhibition. He observed that as a result of the disintegration of external elements related to pollutants color gradually becomes degraded and eventually disappears. The action of bacteria certainly “eliminates” the colorant.
Based on this investigation, which also determines textures, covering capacity, resistance and color gradations, De Lucía has chosen carmine red to insert it in the current Venezuelan political scenario, since politics can appropriate a color and it can also degrade it. This is no longer about a color tone but about an attitude. A way of assuming color. It is thus that, independently of the tests and requisites of quality controls, for some red is translated ultimately into “acceptable or not acceptable”. There are color psychograms that may determine the fascination or fixation that a color can generate in the individual. Obviously, red is the most controversial. And it is this sensory aspect of color that Domingo de Lucía develops in a series of grid matrixes that rationalize the perceptive experience and exalt the uniformity of color. It is no longer a question of acceptable quality patterns, but of individual perceptions. Thus the acceptance or rejection of the presence of red by the mass- es is a consequence of the political use of color.
