POLVO DE ESTRELLAS
Javier Rodríguez Pino
Is the work that resulted from a period of research between September and December 2019 at the Centro de Arte Contemporary MeetFactory, located in the city of Prague in the Czech Republic.
Consisting of a series of drawings in different formats and techniques, Polvo de Estrellas tries to overlap stories and imaginations of two distant countries- Chile and the Czech Republic.
That, after the traumas of totalitarian regimes, have since 1989 embarked on a dangerous path towards an extreme free market economy. Archival images and historical accounts were used, but also elements of fiction, whose main plot centered on a secret resurgence of armed forces that fought against Pinochet during the eighties, in order to attack- in the future year 2020- political leaders of the G7 in Prague.
From this intersection between social sciences, fiction and imagery, a graphic work was constructed that is resolved in three different registers.
The first responds to large-format drawings of the covers of emblematic newspapers bearing news of the attacks, highlighting the use of white pencil on black paper in order to zoom in on the microfilm-derived archive image, as well as to envelop it with a mysterious and disturbing aura.
The first responds to large-format drawings of the covers of emblematic newspapers bearing news of the attacks, highlighting the use of white pencil on black paper in order to zoom in on the microfilm-derived archive image, as well as to envelop it with a mysterious and disturbing aura.
The second corresponds to two medium format drawings that, through a cross between photorealism and comic graphics, make use of photographs that depict two deeply symbolic artefacts of both countries’ totalitarian decline- Pinochet’s wrecked car after the attack he suffered in 1986,
and a line of Czech citizens who, hopeful of the political change that came after the fall of communism in 1989, march with a flag in the middle of the snow.
Finally, the third register corresponds to a large number of drawings, more expressive and gestural in style than the previous drawings, whose objective was to approximate the sketch or graphic note, as if from the pages of a detective’s notebook. These, in unison, articulate the graphic narrative of the planning and execution of the attacks.
