Victor Mahana at the National Museum of Fine Arts

By Carolina Lara B.

Santiago de Chile: Chilean artist Victor Mahana (1977) is going through intense days. While he was exhibiting his work at Isabel Aninat Gallery, Arauco Park in Centex, Valparaíso and during a parallel event in the latest Art Basel Miami Fair, he achieved an uncommon victory for a 12 year-career artist: joining the National Museum of Fine Arts’ (MNBA) scheduling.

His individual exhibition has been recently confirmed for 2013 to be held in this remarkable platform for Chilean artists. While he plans the exhibition and selects the unpublished work to showcase, he finalizes the details to present his graphic work in January 2011 at Artium Gallery, where he’ll be sharing gallery with artist Nelson Plaza.

Exhibiting at the MNBA, as Mahana said “is a success achieved by my painting work and the tenacity I’ve had to validate it in the local circles. It’s a dream came true, an important window to put my work in the map and strengthen it even more in the Chilean art world”.

The painter is famous due to his fine work and his repertory which includes plenty of colorful and lonely architectural spots; halls, windows, walls and doorways opened to lush nature. Defining him demands by using terms such as surrealism, pop, figuration, symbolism and photorealism; or referents such as Rene Magritte, Edward Hopper and David Hockney. Within his disturbing images, there is a rigorous and photographical way of composing. He defines these views as “vivid dreams” which sometimes emerge from a wakefulness state and he might be a whole year gathering pictures, mixing, photoshopping and oil painting.

NEW PICTORIAL TECHNIQUE

Mahana also stands out because he has succeeded on managing his work and displaying it in different national and international stages. Besides, he never stops experimenting. Along with his incursions in digital collage, sonorous art and music, he has been looking for more expressivity in his brushstrokes and color.

He displayed his “Vertigo” exhibition till Dec. 10 at Isabel Aninat Gallery, Arauco Park, with fourteen new paintings which “deal with the surrealism, eye trap, front façades, opposite poles and the contrast between interior design-architecture versus nature and chaos”.

In this site, he had access to a different audience and he showed a new pictorial technique, created by him, and he said: “It’s a depuration of every experimented element, integrating the treatment of base layers with gray gessos, drawings with water pencils, images projection with digital sketches or collages, and painting in differenced layers, from watered-down to primed, with different thickness and transparencies, always emphasizing the alla prima painting. This technique from the 17th century means ‘the first one’, it’s a fast-making and steady-stroke painting, somehow related to what my master taught me, watercolorist Hardy Wistuba”.

FROM ART BASEL MIAMI TO VALPARAISO

From Nov. 30 to Dec. 17, Mahana integrated MOST WANTED Art Basel Exhibition 2010 - Eighth Edition, exhibition by Amy Alonso Gallery in Nomi Art District Miami, one of the activities included in Art Basel, and one the most eagerly awaited fairs of contemporary art in the year, Dec. 2-5 in that city, United States.

He joined a group of young exhibitors related to surrealism. Artists Valentina Brostean, Joseph Firbas, Tomas Valdivieso y Raymond Fuentes were representing the abstract expressionism, fantastic art and pop, along with Chileans Carla Fache and Rodolfo Edwards. Mahana presents a huge triptych (2010) where a wood-floored room faces a hyperrealist mural of a forest with birches.

Till Jan. 9, 2011, he’ll be joining the Gang Bang art collective (Cristian Elizalde, Sebastian Maquieira, Constanza Ragal, Matias Santa Maria, Sebastian Vargas and Jose Romussi) at the National Council of Culture and Arts’ Extension Center (Centex), in Valparaiso. In a sort of laboratory, where every author exhibits one work plus the making process: sketch, palette, among other resources.

In January, the artist will display at Artium Gallery (Alonso de Cordova 3102, Vitacura) an unprecedented facet: his graphic production with engravings in aquatint, charcoal drawing, sketch, watercolors and wash drawings; which dialogue with the work of painter and engraver Nelson Plaza.

ARRIVING IN FINE ARTS

Somehow, Victor Mahana gets to the National Museum of Fine Arts thanks to the exhibition in Miami. It was a synchrony, he claims: “I was there, preparing the works so as to send them to this city, when I met Milan Ivelic (director) and I introduced myself, though he already knew my name and work. We talk a while and he admired one of my recent works, one of the best I’ve done this year. He was very impressed, he had another meeting and I got the confirmation to exhibit on July-August 2013”.

“The exhibition will be divided into two large areas: painting and graphic work (drawings, engravings, watercolors, collages). It’ll be presented at Chile Hall. I intend to display an unpublished work, so I’ll stop participating in exhibitions in the next two years”, he told us.

Do these achievements set a new stage in your career?

Yes, think about it: my work has been always in a limbo between galleries and the avant-garde art circuit. Some people see me as non commercial and other people think the opposite. It’s a validation for me, recognition for 12 years of continuous career. I’ll be focused and working with no concern about been accepted by some galleries or cultural centers.

Carolina Lara B.

569 82054937

5641 2676798

lara.prensa@gmail.com