Did Pepe Apaza take to Mexico techniques and pictorial themes from his Arequipa, or did he discover in Mexico a common latin american theme, and that his medium was universal?

These are sixty works in which, in this traveling show (Lima, Arequipa, León), the choice of the format itself, forces us to come physically close to distinguish the technical detail, a close inspection that turns into a path where we find humble characters, their customs, their instruments and their surroundings in the field, on the streets, or in urban settlements where the tapestry of the city comes lose, like the dreams of a society without the marginalized.

Miniatures become strange for someone who studied mural painting, but because of the nomadic nature of the painter, they are backpack objects that, in fact, take us back to an academic daily reality, that of having reproduced the pages of the book of the art of humanity in small format (tricky scale), as is now seen in drawings, watercolors and paintings of José Apaza all that segment of reality of the continent unwillingly seen in its true dimensions: we have reduced it to miniature which increasingly is less distinguishable and that at times we hide as if by closing a book it will disappeared.

But, beyond the social meaning of this show, there is a pictorial tradition and a medium, since we find ourselves in the figurative, not only mimicking the subject, but also a continuity of correspondence between color in the anecdote and the perspective that separates the characters from the painter and the viewer because none looks straight on. They are all incommunicado and absent in the relationship with the intruder of his immovable world, as if suspended in time, or seen through a keyhole, because they have been accepted without access or presence evidenced in the painting.

With great courage, this painter, who without showmanship or speculations, obliges us to open our eyes so in the seeing better we can look more deeply and thus includes us in those rediscovered small, large worlds.




EDUARDO UGARTE Y CHOCANO
Director del Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Arequipa


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