Living in Peru : your everyday companion

Jose Luis Carranza’s “Lustmord” is an overwhelming onslaught of colors and textures, animals and eyes.  The canvases on which the paintings are made are barely big enough to contain all that Carranza packs into them, as if each painting were his last.  The walls on which the works are hung are saturated with energy, bursting forth into the crowd that only inhibits them more.  As a viewer one feels as if he is entering a space where he is not welcome; eyes glare at him accusingly while insects and guns and grass assault him on every side.  One gallery wall is painted black, perhaps hoping to give the illusion of more space, but a gallery three times the size couldn’t have held the same works any more comfortably.

As abrasive and claustrophobic as the environment might be to the viewer, it is exactly the opposite for Carranza.  “It is of paramount importance to always be surrounded by images, eyes and jaws; I detest emptiness, and, in fact, a blank studio terrifies me,” Carranza said.¹  One is able to sense that necessity by looking at just one of his pieces.  In his smallest work in the show, Caín, measuring 60 x 50 cm, a young man is pictured amid a sky of slashed red above and stabbing blades of grass below.  Taken bit by bit, it is quite delicate and beautiful.  The brushstrokes are precise and controlled.  The colors, while out of the ordinary, are pure and evocative.  The man’s eyes are grey and cloudy, beneath a perplexed brow.  Inch by inch, one can appreciate the allure of Carranza’s works, but taken as a whole, just two paces back, a feeling of anxious energy seeps outward.  It is as if there was something of great importance Carranza had to convey in this particular piece, or that his necessity to always be surrounded by “images, eyes and jaws” requires a canvas of this profusion.

In the work Marte, nearly half of the canvas is painted solid burnt ochre, making it the most inviting piece in the show.  It allows the viewer a moment of contemplation before being driven onward.  In this work, the eyes of another young man stare more directly at the viewer than the rest of Carranza’s subjects, still, but with that familiar grey film, maintaining a certain distance (that in combination with the menacing looking dog and lethal weapons placed at his side).  The balance of solid color and pattern against the usual assault of texture and objects sets this piece apart from the others.  There remains a healthy amount of complex brushstrokes and surprising color combinations to keep the viewer’s eyes moving across the whole canvas – blue beard to gun barrel, dog ear to grenade – but when one’s eyes require a rest, that burnt ochre remains a warm respite at the top of the frame.

“Lustmord” is Carranza’s second individual exhibition at Galería 80m² in as many years.  He titled the exhibition using one foreign word – chosen for its inherent qualities of displacement rather than for its meaning – which adds to the overall effect of bombardment, confusion and a general desire to escape.  When going to this exhibition one should go alone and with the preparedness to confront Carranza’s works with determination. 

¹ Taken from an interview between Carranza and Jorge Castilla Bambaren titled “Turbulencia en el espejo;” translated by Amber Eve Anderson