Luis Cobelo / time to be magical... / sep 8 - 18, 2024
exploring the fragmented interplay of memory, imagination, and identity through performative, mixed-media narratives rooted in Latin American heritage
My photographs are nurtured by an etno(bio)graphic drive
with aesthetic elements of popular narratives connected to my life
experiences. My three main projects, carried out and completed between
2016 and 2024, ZURUMBÁTICO, CHAS CHAS and TE AMO are connected in the core of
the memory, turning my creation, within what I call "informed
spontaneity", into a kind of performative immersion aimed at transforming
consciousness. It may seem improvised, however, it is a controlled space
that focuses on stories, experiences and questions that arise from imaginative,
magical or fantasy realities, to create parallel worlds tailored to my own
expectations. My work has a fragmentation, and constant resignification as
its fundamental characteristics, where the limits between the traditional
pictorial representation and the production of images by the territories of
abstraction can coexist with artistic and documentary practice. Working with the irony and sarcasm that reality offers me, I
reinvent it, not only to compose narrative images, but also to experience art
as a self-reflective exercise and/or the possibility of staging memories, which
emerge when they cross the limits of illusion.
I use photography beyond itself and mixed media as a visual
narrative to reflect on human tensions. Through the way I approach and carry
out my artistic projects, my understanding of the self expands and reflections
are amplified, leading to a broader and deeper understanding of my Latin
American heritage.