Lautaro
The first thing one sees upon entering Lautaro’s studio is a prominent library. Situated in the middle of a cavernous industrial building, it is a brief respite between an array of paintings of various sizes that blot the entire space. Glancing at the shelves, the principal consistency of the library seems to be its randomness. For instance: next to a copy of Ficciones by Borges, there is a book about Japanese flower arrangements, which is next to a compilation of interviews to Fellini, next to a book of anatomy and so on. “The library is a very important element in my creative process. The randomness of the books is a miniature form of resistance against the incessant craving for dogma imposed through modern conditioning. Beneath the layer of civility under which we ordeal daily, lies the truth that life is in fact, at its essential core, totally absent of logic. True existence follows no order and is not constrained by rules or paradoxically even, the absence of rules. An embrace of this hidden truth is a gateway to peace, and for me is the most profound method in my work. I seldom dictate a color or a shape or a symbol, rather they beg for their introduction themselves, their inclusion in the arena of the picture”
Lautaro’s painting seems to be his particular path to this embrace and to capture that organized chaos. Within each canvas is a thriving environment of color, composition, symbolism, figuration and abstraction, which in spite of the intensity of these various elements, attain a harmony through his impetus as an artist and the will of the painting itself .
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Lautaro is magnetically attracted to working on a monumental scale, and respects the figures at a 1 to 1 scale on canvases stretched over firm wood. To suit the mission of his practice, which is to graph and register the will of his impression within a unique moment, the canvases are heavy and robust to mirror this action with strength. He does not resort simply to conventional tools of painting such as the brush, but relies on spatulas, squeezes, rollers and even his fingers as the mediation between his inspiration and the picture.
