UN (EXCINT)
- MATEO PIZZARO
STATEMENT
(UN) EXTINCT It is a historical understanding that the constant investigation into the natural world has brought with it a universe of fantasy chimeras whose existence in the human imagination, has helped to understand the inhabited universe. Explorers of the tangible and the mystical have sought to shape everything that surrounds us and, on their way, they have left a library of theories that feed human inventiveness to this day.
In a discovery that reminds us of the fantastic animals of Altamira, Mateo Pizarro becomes a kind of historian, exploring different ways of playing with the perception between what is known and what only he knows. It is within this experiment that we find two scenarios: on the one hand, the celebration of the discovery and revelation of the fable, this series of works that show us the hidden world brought to light by vision.
On the other hand, we have the tension between seeing and not being seen, which has perfected both the eye and the camouflages in the animal world. This last relationship can be seen reflected in the exercises that accompany the portrayed chimeras. A series of white images that appear only in the corner of the eye when passing. These representations seem to start on the canvas and end in our own imaginary. How much construction is really ours and how much is really present?
In the same way, Pizarro highlights the symbolic and psychological importance that animals have in the construction of the human. With the element of visibility / invisibility the question is brought into play: what happens to us when one species after another disappears by our hand. This is how this tangible link between human and animal spreads like a bridge that shows us our intertwined beginning and a future that is in danger by not understanding the consequences of our actions. The artist then proposes the loss of the symbolic and spiritual foundations on which we build our identity.
Finally we find an interesting exercise that unifies the sample. A sculpture that serves as an effigy of the inevitable connection between the animal and human world. This stoic creature maintains a reminiscence of the sacred symbols of the Egyptians, who always had very clear the union between both worlds. And so it is that, as we walk through the sculpture, it changes before our eyes, it seems to disappear and return like a premonition of what is to come.