Tracing with the heart.
Few Chilean illustrators today have such expressive force in their strokes as Pablo de La Fuente, better known as Gráfika DiabloRojo ( see his collection ). Dialoguing with the most traditional lines of American illustration with popular roots, his art seems to be the updating of a very own language: it contains Chinese dances, Vicente Larrea's posters, the theater, the indigenous people, and also the city, its textures and its pains. The anatomies of his drawings are those of a Latin American expressionist, who through the exaggeration of form and proportions seeks to empathize with the drama of everyday life. His characters have very intense feelings, reflections of a history and a reality as diverse as Chile.
How would you describe your job?
I think of myself primarily as a Latin American artist, above all else. I am an artist from this territory who tries to represent the Latin "corpus" not from the typical folklore, but from the anatomy of the body, which like the earth is marked by hard furrows. I place myself as an artist within the social feeling.
Why do you make art?
I make art as a way of expressing emotions and feelings, as a way of revealing part of the internal processes, I make art to meet people through emotion, to create things in which they feel their emotions, feelings and thoughts reflected, and always working from honesty, always working from feeling as a social subject. What are your greatest pursuits as a creator, what are your processes?
In your opinion, what are the most relevant or beloved works or projects in which you have participated so far?
Within the work of the records, the ones that represent me the most or the most spoiled are "La Maquinita" by Juan Fe, "Vengo" by Ana Tijoux, "Festejos" by Banda Conmoción and "Mov Rap and Reggae" by Movimiento Original. I feel that it is where I best managed to represent the music, to best graphically represent what the music represented. Within my more personal processes there is a silkscreen that I like a lot called "Caricia". Of the paintings, I think that "María", the one of the Virgin, is my most spoiled painting because it is one of those paintings that when I see it I feel that I did not make it, I feel that it goes through me.
What is your view on the state of the art today?
It's very complex. For me, the art world is determined by what the art market dictates, what is good, what deserves to be in galleries and in the mainstream, what provokes, etc. And for me, in that state of art, in the hegemonic art market, I don't feel very represented, it's not the place I'm interested in living in. The world needs art that reflects us, that makes us feel and moves us.
What art does the world we inhabit need?
I don't think there is such a thing as "art" in capital letters. We need many arts, as many forms of art as there are people on this planet. We need art that is not cynical, that does not avoid human feeling for intellectual reasons or for stupidity. I think that all art that reflects some feeling is necessary art. We need art that touches our souls in order to understand our internal processes.
How do you see Chilean art?
