8/13/2019 Santiago Caruso Ars Obscura Show Dossier

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NEW YORK, NY (March 2nd, 2013) -- Last Rites Gallery presents ARS OBSCURA :

Terror y Miseria, a solo artist exhibition of works by Argentinian artist Santiago Caruso.

This will be Caruso's first exhibition at the gallery and will include paintings from three

series: "Superstition and Inquisition" , "Revealers, Prophets & Liars" and "Profound

Shadow From the Past" that have never before been exhibited in the United States.

Caruso's wor ks are of a time and place of both the past and present; a world not unlike

our own -- where the physical embodiment of demons and hellions roam the earth and overturn the religious, commonplace and basic tenets of society for a world overrun with

magic, terrors, witches and other beast s. Caruso's poetic, macabre, yet foretelling world

is laden with mythological symbols and relative imagery, illuminating the other side of

common axioms stressed by society and religion that harness culture and,

theoretically, preserve and sustain both mankind and a functioning civilization. Perhaps

Caruso is shedding light on the demons that, although appear to be suppressed by

humanity and its tenets, still exist and inevitably run rampant in mankind.

Caruso's artistic prowess and content are influenced by the writings of Edgar Allan Poe,

Charles Baudelaire, Marcel Schwob, German Expressionism cinema as well as the artwork of Odilon Redon, Frantisek Kupka, Gustave Moreau, Max Klinger, James

Ensor and Mikhail Vrubel. The gothic narratives present in ARS OBSCURA: Terror y

Miseria are executed uniquely in the artist's manipulation of watercolor, ink, tempera

and the physical scratching of the medium, which effectively strengthens the foreboding

and morbid nature of his works.

>> PRESS RELEASE >> ONLINE VIEW

" This gallery of horror archetypes or phantasmagories to come, proposes a pilgrimage

under the gaze of archaic deities : the viewer must deal with false prophets, demonsand hungry ghosts, attend to dark aquelarres, bearing the erosion of Time.

Everything is a metaphor of man subjected to the forces of Nature and Superstition,

mother of the ignorance and fear. However, it is also the artist's intention

to revindicate miserables, segregated by the higher powers, who

as senile demiurges that eventually recover their will and intellect,

may transform the world forever

with redeeming or damning gesture. "

S.C.

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INTERVIEW

Last Rites Gallery: In your early years, what first inspired you to pursue life as an artist?

Santiago Caruso: I would like to know the exact moment when somebody becomes an artist. That would be great for a biographer. I don't know. I'm just conscious that I am a profound observer of all, mostly people: their gestures, their voices, their shapes. I've been always interested in the human question of gestures as a reflection of internal emotions. Cartoons, comics and caricatures were my first influences. I was always imitating people, acting or talking as others. A joker-child. Also, music has always been a constant stimulus for me. Religion and the heroic idea of the saints and martyrs could be an origin for me to see the life as an artist as well. This can lead you to loneliness and melancholy, which are two powerful forces that can drive you to create art.

Last Rites Gallery: Who and/or what are your creative influences?

Santiago Caruso: Decadentism, symbolism and romanticism in painting and literature. Also, the tenebrism of Jusepe de Ribera, the language of Hieronymus Bosch, Max Klinger, William Blake and Odd Nerdrum.

Last Rites Gallery:What first led you to the world of the dark and macabre?

Santiago Caruso: You can blame Edgar Allan Poe for that and for many other things. He is guilty of all. I read him when I was 12 -maybe too late, maybe too early- but he put me

on the fantastic path to forever, with his unique concept of tragedy, mystery and poetry.Charles Baudelaire is the source of the evil as a main theme in my artwork. He led me to Rimbaud, Lautreamont and many others. So, I really enjoy that position between gothic romanticism and surrealism, which is the symbolism: strange mixture of poetry, the macabre redeemed by brushstrokes of a luminous sensibility, and a mythical view of the world on the search of higher powers condemning the ones who submit us into stupidity and decadence.

Last Rites Gallery: You were born and currently reside in Argentina. How do you see

your upbringing and surroundings affecting your artwork?

Santiago Caruso: Since we are in this unjust world, this kind of jail that human selfishness created here, you must deal with many painful things. I do not believe in pre-birth merits that allow you to be born in a place corresponding to your virtue. That idea is the one that lets you be comfortable with the advantages you have, and to be blind at the inequality of the ones without rights. Argentina has a constitution based on the United States. We have public hospitals and public education - including universities and including immigrants since the 19th century. We have had a terrible 20th century, with many violent and dictatorial illegal governments, supported by the imperialism of the countries of the first world. Now, since the hole of 2001 created by the emptying of corrupted functionaries and wrong economic policies, who broke the country in two, we

have a government which has started to break the inequality of everyone who was in misery. I come from a generation raised in the 80's and part of the 90's, under the neoliberalism who have eaten all the content of the political matters, and now I see that the political discussion is in the air after a decade or more of non interest from my part and so many others. There is so much to do from now to the future, but this country is better than it ever was. It is a beautiful land, full of cultures because of the immigration, as the U.S., at the first part of the last century.Well, I am Caruso, I come from an Italian family mixed with a Spanish one. The people here are fantastic, so generous and warm. The most important thing here, is that it doesn’t matter where you were born, you can study if you try hard to get out from

poverty.

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Last Rites Gallery: What type of reception do you find your work garnering in your

hometown? And in Latin America in general?

Santiago Caruso: Quilmes, is a big city, 30 minutes from the capital city of the country,

Buenos Aires. In my hometown, my artwork is known by some professors at the school of arts I previously attended and three bookstores carry my illustrated books (laughs). I mean to say that I am not a famous person here. I am a painter and I don't hear many people talking about who his favorite painter is. My artwork is well known by illustrators, comic artists and some important visual artists. The public is there at any event, at exhibitions, book's presentations or speeches, etc. Publishers respect my work so well. On the other hand, galleries from here have looked to the other way every time I try to make contact. The concept of art here, is stuck in the 60's with the worst idea of art, in my opinion. Towards a figurative and archaic artwork as I make, local gallerists have their eyelids closed. The illustrated books I made with Libros del Zorro Rojo, such as

"The Dunwich Horror ", "The Bloody Countess" and "The monk and the hangman's daughter ", have garnered a large quantity of followers of my work throughout Latin America. Now, I will return to Colombia for the International Illustration Congress in Bogota, invited by other artists over there, as we are linked through the art. Those books have been translated to Portuguese, Russian and Czech, so the links to other countries are larger now. Internet and social networks are the best way to introduce your image to the world. Publishers from Japan have contacted me for an interview to be featured in a magazine of illustration and to be part of an art book. It seems that to work hard as hell will recompense you.

Last Rites Gallery: What did you study in school? How has this experience shaped

your aesthetic?

Santiago Caruso: I studied to be an accountant at the secondary school (incredible). In reality, it was a humanistic, biologist and mathematical education. Of course this hasn't improved my aesthetic. The experience at the school of Beaux Arts here in Quilmes (and in everywhere in Argentina since a few decades) is an experimental, open minded and a wick formation. The classic and technical elements you must learn when you want to be an artist, are not taught herein. Maybe just some primal notions of composition, but the structure of the shapes, bodies and the whole world is missing here, because the abstraction, the performances and installation, do not require you to learn and handle those things. So I was always in trouble and discussing this with the professors. When I was studying art at this school and before, I was reading comics and learning from illustrators. Now I work as an illustrator, and I study and think as a visual painter, so I have other criterion than the publishers many times. I am always in the wrong place at the wrong time it seems.

Last Rites Gallery: If you were not an artist, what other profession would you pursue?

Santiago Caruso: Now, I would like to be a philosopher or a book editor, whatever my brain allows me to do. But, I am a complete devotee of music. I play guitar and I sing

too. So if I were not painting here all day, I would be singing the blues at some hidden bar. Music is so relevant to my artwork that it is always there filling me, and inviting me to enter into a creative space and time. One day, I saw a video of Neil Young playing the piano and the phrase of Tagore: "God respects me when I work, but He loves me when I sing" stuck with me. In spite of the fact that I don't believe in God on the Tagore´s way no more, the spirit of that idea is something I share. God is an abstract concept of a language. It is the idea that rules the entire logic pattern of a language. As music is a non-referential language, I think the eternal mystery of God is best represented in music than in words or visual art. Neil Young really has something to be on my appreciation of that phrase, no doubt. I sing while I work. It leads me to the best state of the spirit or

mind.

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Last Rites Gallery: What was your main motivation for this body of work?

Santiago Caruso: First of all, about this show I must say thanks for the invitation and the enormous privilege to share the space with the great artists that are Richard T Scott

and Adam Miller. I was not sure how Adam and Richard felt about showing with me but since the opening, I have spoken with Richard and know he and Adam both really like my artwork. The art pieces reunited under the name " ARS OBSCURA: Terror y Miseria" all share the relation between Superstition and Fear. The images allows us to take a tour through the mythical-religious symbolism of Western culture. Some of them are clearly about Catholicism and many others are more related to the fantastic language of legends and mythic literature. "Ars Obscura" is a metaphor of the obscured myths, which have a powerful domain over the human spirit.

Last Rites Gallery: Three different series, "Superstition and Inquisition", "Revealers,

Prophets and Liars" and "Profound Shadows from the Past" make up your exhibition here at Last Rites Gallery. Please share with us why you choose to segment your

works into individual series and how you feel these communicate the intention of the

body to your audience.

Santiago Caruso: The first series: "Superstition and Inquisition" , has to do with the tension between pagan rituals and the hegemonic religion. If you pay attention to the witches series, you will find all the cliches about them: the flight, the use of animals and children for dark purposes, the nudity of women, the oblations to the Satan, etc. So you see them as a menace to the humanity. But when you reach the last figure, you are in front of the Patriarch, the man who wants to dominate the feminine power of the ancient cults. This carrier of The Word of the Lord , Pope Innocent VIII, is writing the the papal edict that will start the worst persecution to the feminine gender in history, from that obscured Middle Ages till now. Woman are the real carrier of magic, understood as the mystery of beauty, sensuality, reproduction and the profound knowledge about Nature which comprehends: medicinal plants, alchemy of cooking and the crop periods. So this series represents the clash between natural knowledge and the law that tries to subject it, or suppress it. The myth about witches created by the Inquisition has dominated with terror over the uneducated and superstitious people, to put down the ancient powers of the female gender to the word of the lord, the word of man.

The Word of the Lord

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"Revealers, Prophets and Liars" is some kind of fantastic response to the previous

matter-solved in watercolors- presented as the contraposition of religion and poetry: it is a mixture of visions about the heroic figure of both ways of perception, which builds his own story of existence. The prophet, the revealer, the hermit, the cursed poet are examples of different ways to live with the word. Poetry is my answer to dogmatism.

The only way to create new myths, that lets us dream again."Profound Shadows from the Past" is a gallery of dark powers who rules us: as time,

icons, magic, sorrow, decadent society, dogmatism, etc.

Last Rites Gallery: Tell us about your artistic process. You implement a "scratching"

technique in some of your pieces such as Veiled God and The Plague of a Coming

Age. Please tell us more about how and why you do this.

Veiled God

The Plague of a Coming Age

Santiago Caruso: The scratching technique is something I've discovered by exploration. I've started making comics in 1998 and a professor of mine told me about a way to make passages between blacks to whites by scratching the borders of the ink masses to use the texture of white bulaer as middle tones. This thing was difficult to get, because the compact paper used to make that effect (Schoeller durex of 300 grams, I think), was not available here at those days. One day, several years later, a friend of mine gave me a stack of luster papers, different than the one mentioned before, and I

started to experiment with inks and a razor blade. The experience was incredible. After that I used a cutter to have a better control of the lines.

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I love drawing and engraving, but the procedure I've created is different that the traditional scratching (which I found later). My process allows to reach a mixture between painting and drawing, with an engraving look. If you visit my library, you will find many painters, but I have a lot of books about etchings, engravings and drawings from Max Klinger, Albrecht Durer, Victor Delhez, Lucas Leyden, Harry Clarke and several

medieval masters. I have a complete fascination in the darkness suggested by the stain, because in this nebula you can sense new forms; mental phantasmagoria generated by the interaction of the visual stimulus of the crystallized ink on the unconscious and what it interprets. Thus, what is only an inert surface, begins to come alive in the eyes or the mind of the artist. I create beginning from deep thinking and introspection and investigating and reading, but the procedure always starts from a dark base, always proposing to me other paths or details that I didn't explore previously. The process is really free and full of improvisations. It's alive. This is my ritual to rescue a piece of light from the shadows of the past, from the unknown, from the mystery. About the pieces you mentioned, "Veiled God" and "The plague of a coming age" , are both

related to the idea of an occult past, a hidden knowledge that is revealed by the artwork. The first piece, speaks about the ancient entities created by the past cults, which incarnates later the well known idea of angels from Judaism and Christianity. All those imageries express different ways of understanding existence, the spirit or forces of nature. So the angel on the icon, can be a re-elaboration of an older god of the wind, as on the tale by Mark Valentine that this image serves as the visual reflection. The second piece is also about a forgotten conflict rooted on the past, a violent history that gives its fruit of death to the future. If you can't remember and you try the fruits of this tree, you will be lost. A buried memory leads to fall into a worse error.

Last Rites Gallery: You paint a dark and provocative world that in many ways is not too

different from our own. What do these places and subjects mean to you and why do you

choose your mediums to bring them to life?

Santiago Caruso: Darkness is the provocative axis from where my aesthetic is based on, as the opposite space to the recognizable, it is the subjective place where the palpable form dilutes in a spectral mood to resemble to the subtle, the ethereal and reaching the expressive possibility of the sensitive. This dance of opposites: life and death, sortilege and enigma, are the two-faced entity waving the opus. On this perpetual motion of concealments and revelations, good and evil is redefined permanently. I want to deconstruct the idea of evil, questioning the established idea of good to find a new structure, which includes the condemned people to it. This aesthetic of rupture, can extract something about the human, from the un-human aspects.

Last Rites Gallery: What are your optimal studio conditions?

Santiago Caruso: I would like to have it in perfect order, but that lasts as long I move a muscle. I don't need so much space. I make small pieces mostly, but in my mind, I need space. When you work on your own, you must manage many things: e-mails, contracts, invoices, paper works, social networks, readings, investigations and studies, bla, bla bla. I am having problems to handle all this and continue sane. The mind needs

time to focus onto something very deeply, to create. I come to the working space at 9AM, but my optimal condition is to be a little tired, at the hour when the sun is falling, and to work really in focus until I fall inside the artwork. I can't keep working late at night as I did before because I have two kids and a wife who are waiting for me. This is the most important change in my life, which interferes with my capacities, but at the same time they have linked me more closely to life. If they were not there to keep me tied to the concrete aspects of existence, my mind and being would inevitably rise like a balloon until it found the sun: that flaming star or the circular spot of gold and orange shining on the paper. So I live, between the attempt to transform and control the symbol to operate on reality, and the real structures of the task to educate my sons in freedom,

to be better human beings who change the world.

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Last Rites Gallery: You have illustrated a number of book and album covers. Which

piece has been your favorite thus far?

Santiago Caruso: I really love several pieces I have painted. I love one tiny image I

made, from my firsts scratchings: Mystery I. It is a piece of paper of 9 cm by 2.5 cm, about a masked figure who has the key to some place in custody. I think this image has been the keyhole to enter into-or to spy on- a new world I am discovering with each artwork. The other piece I love so much isGabinete de Maravillas (Wunderkammer). I made it from a tale by à ngel Olgoso, an incredible Spanish writer of micro-fictions. I don't have it any more as Guillermo del Toro bought it.

Gabinete de Maravillas (Wunderkammer)

Last Rites Gallery: Your pieces whether intentional or not, read as a commentary on

mankind and society. Is this intentional? What do you think is the bane of the

individual? Society?

Santiago Caruso: The bane of the individual is society, consumer society. The hegemonic vision of the neoliberalism that sees citizens as consumption subjects, with an only and holy right on their favor: to consume or to be consumed, is what destroys the human spirit, his capacities and liberty to choose and think. So, the focus on mankind's conflict is always intentional in my production, because it concerns a part of the problem of evil.

Last Rites Gallery: Here is our Paul Booth question: if you could dig up an artist from

the past to consume their brains for more artistic power, who would it be?

Santiago Caruso: I choose to taste Charles Baudelaire’s, because I really like the bitter-sweet flavors. It would taste as the perfect wine.