Eldorado/en

Eldorado

Regina Parra

The paintings from the "Eldorado" series all seem very strange. If we look at them carefully we can see barren landscapes with people walking in them. We can't come up with a story for what we see, but we can get a feeling that there is something happening. And when we look at these paintings we become witnesses to this mysterious affair.

Despite the fact that they are landscapes, these paintings are much more similar to photographic capture from videos. The technical quality and the use of colors is much closer to the limit of RGB patterns used in TV monitors than natural landscapes. This similarity reveals a procedure frequently used by the artist: the appropriation of images captured by surveillance cameras. With this information we become aware that, probably, we are in fact witnessing (or monitoring) a crime committed by these people walking by (or being monitored) in these canvases (or screens).

At the same time, on the other hand, the title, "Eldorado", could leads us to think of a place somehow utopic, where wealth and better life conditions could be found. Certainly this is not the kind of place that these paintings portray, but it could be that this place is where these walkers-by are going to. The case begins to take shape: we are witnesses to a situation in which the recorded people are walking towards their "eldorados", their better places. But, as it seems, they have not reached their goals or destinies, for they were surprised by these surveillance cameras.

The absence of any identification regarding which are the places these paintings refer to reveals that the artist is not interested in certain places or specific contexts, but in a generalized condition of transit from one state to another, in an interval between what's been left behind and what's yet to come, be it in space or in time. The intention is to portray the present time in search for the future as represented in these places.

see also:

Hino, 2008