The following has been translated from Spanish.

My name is Florencia Portocarrero; I am a Lima based contemporary art curator and writer. In this recording, I will provide some background on Tras los ojos a work by Eamon Ore-Giron which was commissioned by Landmarks for the Department of Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin.

Tras los ojos, which in English means “Behind The Eyes,” is a large-scale digital print that was made from the artist’s orginal abstract painting. Ore-Giron refers to abstraction as the “root of perception,” and his public art projects are made in an abstract tradition that resists fixed meanings. However, his commitment to abstraction does not come at the expense of deeper discussion. On the contrary, the artist combines geometric and elemental forms to tell a story of intense cultural exchanges that subvert the linear ways that European history is often understood, and favors perspectives inspired by Latin American artistic traditions.

Ore-Giron’s work is permeated by a desire to investigate how cultures and identities influence each other, as they do in his own life. The artist was born and raised in Tucson to a Peruvian father and a mother of Irish descent. Later, he pursued his BFA at the San Francisco Art Institute and his MFA at the University of California. Before moving permanently to Los Angeles, he spent time studying in Mexico City, Guadalajara in Mexico, and in Huancayo and Lima in Peru.

His paintings reflect these displacements, as well as his deep affinity for the Latinx community. In his figurative work of the early 2000s, Eamon recreated a surreal world in which his family memories of the Peruvian Andes and the American Southwest fuse organically. In his more recent geometric paintings, he explores the visual possibilities of intercultural influence, highlighting the persistence of marginalized forms as they become more integrated into our/dominant/prevailing culture.

Tras los ojos was strongly informed by Ore-Girón biography as well as the conversations that he had with different faculty members from UT’s department of psychology. Combining these personal reflections and the conversations, the artist chose to explore the eye and the process of vision as a metaphor for the information that reaches the mind involuntarily. In addition, the artist found inspiration in the sense of movement of several artistic movements such as  Futurism and the methods of Constructivism. He also integrated direct references to the natural world, and Peruvian pre-Columbian textiles and architecture. Thus, in a palette of deep, solid colors that evoke the moments of darkness before sunset, we see circular forms inspired by ophthalmological eye charts. These are juxtaposed with a hard-edged zig zag that punctuates the center of the composition and evokes the ways we perceive and interpret the world around us.

By using these various elements, Ore Giron shows that artistic forms are inherently social and political. In doing so, his work expands the artists, communities, and geographies traditionally related to abstraction. Ore-Giron’s artistic practice creates a shared space where European, pre-Columbian, contemporary indigenous, and popular Latin American influences coexist. This polyvocal, intercultural and interdependent vision not only challenges the foundational myths of artistic modernity, but is more relevant than ever in our increasingly xenophobic world.