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Colectivo de Artistas Contemporáneos en Antigua: C.A.C.A.

To understand the sheer, unadulterated joy that the beautiful monkeys of C.A.C.A. bring to my life, you first have to recognize and accept the secret of laughter and reinvention. I’ll try to explain my thoughts on the matter succinctly: Art is born free, but too often is culled and brought to markets dominated by the money and ego of folks who wouldn’t know beauty if it snuck up and bit them on the ass. In Guatemala the limited number of wealthy patrons — all of whom know one another, do business with one another, rely on one another and yet are constantly attacking one another — was a perfectly evil-laboratory for such foolishness. Art for the patron class came prepackaged with sniping and silliness. That reality did the nation no favors when it came to vibrancy in cultural expression for, say, five hundred years — give or take a genius or two a century. 

Now, under certain circumstances, such concentrated — yet divisive — patronage could lead to rival schools, contested ideals, champions and the foment of battle. Sadly, the opposite dynamic happened here for generations. Over the centuries, it may have been an over-adherence to the principles of Old Europe.  More recently it was certainly shaped by 36 years of civil conflict and the fear that such a reign engendered. Patrons have long been unwilling to rock the boat, lest their politics or religious affiliation be called into question in ways that might upset their social status. Thus, the marketplace of ideas became self-policing and self-stultifying. By the time of the peace accords, most Guatemalan artists who were selling had far more in common with the Hang-In-There-Baby school of Kitten-In-A-Tree formalism than anything resembling the spark of human genius. 

Now, please take note — we are not at all saying that vibrant, beautiful work did not exist, we’re saying that only those who diligently stayed within the box could expect to thrive well enough on their paintings to feed their families and get drunk at the beach when required for proper spiritual rejuvenation. That was the game: The galleries, museums and private mansions were filled with old masters and aging impostors. 

That’s been changing in the past decade, and La Cuadra has been doing our best to chronicle the work that has grown in fields once so barren that they seemed beyond salvation. In the past two years we’ve been increasingly convinced that it is artists like those in C.A.C.A. who have been, if you’ll forgive us,  fertilizing the soil with humor, vision, new hope and proficient technique. As such, their work pulls us in. With them we feel welcomed by friends as fellow travelers on the path of artistic expression and exploration. But what we love most is the combination, the balance, they have achieved between the joy of individual execution and collective reinforcement and support. Together, they have each found a way to shake off the pressures of a marketplace that has long demanded fidelity to safe ground. 

While their work is beautiful, thank drunk-baby Jesus and all the sodden Saints that they are fleeing from the world of decorative bullshit like scalded cats. They, like many of their generation, are gulping in the fresh air of creation, rather than the sewer gas of wealthy and timid expectations. Together, they are truly a feral movement — as irreverent as youth, as slick as sexuality, and as fresh as brand new hominids up in the trees hurling poop down onto the tired old men of tired old conventions. The artists of C.A.C.A. take their work seriously, but not themselves. They realize, I’d argue, that their primary job is to laugh at conventional wisdom and by so doing, sounding the bell of cultural reinvention. by Michael Tallon

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Sueños del Trópico, Lucía Morán Giracca

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Colaboración, Juan Pablo Canale and Rodolfo de León

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The Colectivo de Artistas Contemporáneos en Antigua: C.A.C.A.

To understand the sheer, unadulterated joy that the beautiful monkeys of C.A.C.A. bring to my life, you first have to recognize and accept the secret of laughter and reinvention. I’ll try to explain my thoughts on the matter succinctly: Art is born free, but too often is culled and brought to markets dominated by the money and ego of folks who wouldn’t know beauty if it snuck up and bit them on the ass. In Guatemala the limited number of wealthy patrons — all of whom know one another, do business with one another, rely on one another and yet are constantly attacking one another — was a perfectly evil-laboratory for such foolishness. Art for the patron class came prepackaged with sniping and silliness. That reality did the nation no favors when it came to vibrancy in cultural expression for, say, five hundred years — give or take a genius or two a century. 

Now, under certain circumstances, such concentrated — yet divisive — patronage could lead to rival schools, contested ideals, champions and the foment of battle. Sadly, the opposite dynamic happened here for generations. Over the centuries, it may have been an over-adherence to the principles of Old Europe.  More recently it was certainly shaped by 36 years of civil conflict and the fear that such a reign engendered. Patrons have long been unwilling to rock the boat, lest their politics or religious affiliation be called into question in ways that might upset their social status. Thus, the marketplace of ideas became self-policing and self-stultifying. By the time of the peace accords, most Guatemalan artists who were selling had far more in common with the Hang-In-There-Baby school of Kitten-In-A-Tree formalism than anything resembling the spark of human genius. 

Now, please take note — we are not at all saying that vibrant, beautiful work did not exist, we’re saying that only those who diligently stayed within the box could expect to thrive well enough on their paintings to feed their families and get drunk at the beach when required for proper spiritual rejuvenation. That was the game: The galleries, museums and private mansions were filled with old masters and aging impostors. 

That’s been changing in the past decade, and La Cuadra has been doing our best to chronicle the work that has grown in fields once so barren that they seemed beyond salvation. In the past two years we’ve been increasingly convinced that it is artists like those in C.A.C.A. who have been, if you’ll forgive us,  fertilizing the soil with humor, vision, new hope and proficient technique. As such, their work pulls us in. With them we feel welcomed by friends as fellow travelers on the path of artistic expression and exploration. But what we love most is the combination, the balance, they have achieved between the joy of individual execution and collective reinforcement and support. Together, they have each found a way to shake off the pressures of a marketplace that has long demanded fidelity to safe ground. 

While their work is beautiful, thank drunk-baby Jesus and all the sodden Saints that they are fleeing from the world of decorative bullshit like scalded cats. They, like many of their generation, are gulping in the fresh air of creation, rather than the sewer gas of wealthy and timid expectations. Together, they are truly a feral movement — as irreverent as youth, as slick as sexuality, and as fresh as brand new hominids up in the trees hurling poop down onto the tired old men of tired old conventions. The artists of C.A.C.A. take their work seriously, but not themselves. They realize, I’d argue, that their primary job is to laugh at conventional wisdom and by so doing, sounding the bell of cultural reinvention.

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Sueños del Trópico, Lucía Morán Giracca

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Colaboración, Juan Pablo Canale and Rodolfo de León

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Bien Trabajado, Juan Pablo Canale

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La Cueva, Ancris Garcia Cabezas

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Gone Fishing, Christel Brenninkmeijer

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To find more art, satire, political analysis and the occasional dick joke, swing by here: http://tinyurl.com/n572mfx

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Las Travesuras de Don Gallo, The Mischief of Mr. Rooster: 50 x 70 cm, Doniel Espinoza. 

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Down the Rabbit Hole, with Doniel Espinoza

your companions — particularly when the subject is his provincial, historically anchored psychoanalytic techniques. They may have worked wonders for late 19th century, bourgeois Viennese men, but are decidedly less applicable the further removed one becomes from that circle. Yet, Freud’s dream analysis remains potent and penetrating, and it is something to keep in mind when visiting La Antigua Galería de Arte to explore the latest work by the remarkable Guatemalan artist Doniel Espinoza.

Espinoza takes the literary tradition of magical realism and translates it into the visual medium. As such, his paintings and sculptures explore the soft, reactive middle-world between the conscious and the unconscious mind. Freud would counsel viewers to question the manifest content that populate the images in order to gain an understanding of the latent “work” that is being done. Look at the surface, to see through the surface. There is the truth. Each painting or sculpture is awash with grinning storks, passing owls, smiling toads, sneaking mice, rabbits, holes, hats and the recurring image of a stiletto heel. These characters and icons are the living menagerie that ride “the royal road” to the unconscious, as Freud called dreams. They are beautiful, playful, light-hearted but evocative of deep emotion. They are also a temptation to wonder what is really going on in this artist’s mind and soul. Moreover, what Espinoza does here beautifully is to provide the audience with a series of traveling companions for a journey into their own deeper jungle of self.

To read more from La Cuadra Magazine, visit our website: www.lacuadramagazine.com. 

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Las Travesuras de Don Gallo, The Antics of Mr. Rooster: 50 x 70 cms, Doniel Espinoza

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El Cuervo y los Conejos, The Crow and the Rabbits: 50 x 70cm, Doniel Espinoza