CLAUDIO DICOCHEA: CONFESSIONS
I am the product of the Mexican-US cultural collision. Physically and spiritually,
I grew up in the borderland. I learned to read Spanish from the bloody and
pornographically indulgent comics El Libro Rojo and Kaliman, while learning to
read English from the scatological and drug-filled sociopolitical satire of Mad
Magazine. This concurrent cultural abrasion marked the beginning of my torrid
love affair with mass-produced visual language and the tension that rises from
dualistic natures.
Growing up in San Luis, Sonora, Mexico, I experienced the everyday cultural
differences on both sides of this border town. However, it was the difference
between how popular images and text translated into real life, and what that
meant to people, which truly captured my imagination. Watching a ‘Tweety &
Sylvester’ cartoon on American television, and then looking at child-size plaster
statues of them being sold as we waited in line for customs is, to this day, both
funny and strange. The stock characters and stereotypical ideas from the novels
and comic books commonly found lying around my house became the first
currency of images I related to. I drew up my own versions where Spanish would
cohabitate with English and the mix of characters formed hybrid plots.
Today, the representational and the abstract are still warring with each other in
my work. The paintings before you are primarily figurative with the inclusion of
limited text from folk songs and boleros my grandparents would play. Likewise,
the colors are strongly informed by nostalgia for the Mexican candy and pulp
literature of my childhood. Many times, the title of each piece comes directly
from the lyrics of those older songs and goes on to become the central theme.
There are several reasons for this.
First of all, I love most of these songs, love listening to them, dancing to them,
and on rare occasions singing to them –their sounds have been around me since
the womb. Secondly, because they have been present at every turn of my life,
whether glorious and blissful or harrowing and mournful, I remain intrigued by
how these trite, cheesy, love songs only serve to deepen and amplify my
experience at those irreducible moments. This leads me to become suspicious of
these so-called flat, one-dimensional bits of text or lyrics; they start reminding
me of something else that has behaved similarly, albeit from a different format:
my little drawings of cartoon stereotypes. Coupled with one or more of the visual
clichés from my upbringing, the text helps stake out the initial boundaries for
each painting in order to re-examine what these elements mean to me, how they
now translate into my life.
I grew up in the borderland. I learned to read Spanish from the bloody and
pornographically indulgent comics El Libro Rojo and Kaliman, while learning to
read English from the scatological and drug-filled sociopolitical satire of Mad
Magazine. This concurrent cultural abrasion marked the beginning of my torrid
love affair with mass-produced visual language and the tension that rises from
dualistic natures.
Growing up in San Luis, Sonora, Mexico, I experienced the everyday cultural
differences on both sides of this border town. However, it was the difference
between how popular images and text translated into real life, and what that
meant to people, which truly captured my imagination. Watching a ‘Tweety &
Sylvester’ cartoon on American television, and then looking at child-size plaster
statues of them being sold as we waited in line for customs is, to this day, both
funny and strange. The stock characters and stereotypical ideas from the novels
and comic books commonly found lying around my house became the first
currency of images I related to. I drew up my own versions where Spanish would
cohabitate with English and the mix of characters formed hybrid plots.
Today, the representational and the abstract are still warring with each other in
my work. The paintings before you are primarily figurative with the inclusion of
limited text from folk songs and boleros my grandparents would play. Likewise,
the colors are strongly informed by nostalgia for the Mexican candy and pulp
literature of my childhood. Many times, the title of each piece comes directly
from the lyrics of those older songs and goes on to become the central theme.
There are several reasons for this.
First of all, I love most of these songs, love listening to them, dancing to them,
and on rare occasions singing to them –their sounds have been around me since
the womb. Secondly, because they have been present at every turn of my life,
whether glorious and blissful or harrowing and mournful, I remain intrigued by
how these trite, cheesy, love songs only serve to deepen and amplify my
experience at those irreducible moments. This leads me to become suspicious of
these so-called flat, one-dimensional bits of text or lyrics; they start reminding
me of something else that has behaved similarly, albeit from a different format:
my little drawings of cartoon stereotypes. Coupled with one or more of the visual
clichés from my upbringing, the text helps stake out the initial boundaries for
each painting in order to re-examine what these elements mean to me, how they
now translate into my life.
