The Chilean Dasic Fernandez does not forget his street art origins and that is why he puts a touch of spray paint on his paintings, like those of his first solo exhibition in the United Statesamong which there is one created to support that Chili have a constitution not born in “a dictatorship”.
“I’m still a bit in shock”he tells Efe in the gallery Goldman Global Art (GGA) of Miamiwhere his exhibition opens this Thursday, when talking about the victory of the “no” in the recent plebiscite to which the proposal for a new Magna Carta was submitted, which supported the government of the president Gabriel Boric.
One of the more than 20 works in the exhibition, “The Lightness of Being”stands out for the lightness of being in Spanish, its vibrant color and the prominence of the human figure. Fernandez36, did it “to put on cloth” an illustration, later converted into animation, with which he participated in the campaign to encourage Chileans to vote “I approve”.
HOPEFUL WITH A CHANGE
This internationally renowned urban artist, who transformed the Flag Walk of his native Santiago with an installation 3D and the desert of Saudi Arabia with “The Clock of the Times”says he has thought “much” about 62% of rejection who threw the september 4 consultation.
As a “very positive” person, he remains “hopeful” that the process ends in the “best way” and that the idea that “yes, a new constitution can be written” triumphs.
“That we no longer be governed by the current Constitution, which comes directly from the dictatorship (headed by Augusto Pinochet)”underlines.
But it is not politics that Dasic is most interested in, but art, in which he has been since he was 14 years old, first as a graffiti artist in Santiago looking for a place to paint and then, since 2009, in New York painting murals, this time with the permission of different institutions and communities.
For art, he left his architecture studies in the fifth year. “I needed full time”underlines in the interview conducted at the GGA gallery, located within the grounds of the famous urban art museum known as “Wynwood Walls”, on whose walls he painted for the first time in 2016.
One of his murals, from 2019, was saved from the renovation that is done from time to time to give new artists the opportunity to exhibit in this open-air museum.
THE ART OF DASIC
“My idea and my focus are on people, on people. On the potential, the capacities and especially the feelings that I think we share… Trying to reflect these feelings in an image is the basis of my work” .
Nature says that it is one more element in the composition, because it “I like to see life being part of nature”.
However, the figure of the hummingbird is repeated, because he likes them and that he sees many in the place where he has his home in Santiago, but also because he is inspired by the fact that it is the only bird that “You can fly in reverse, but you have to do it with your eyes straight ahead..
For Fernandezthe hummingbird contains a lesson: you can visit the past but always looking to the future.
The artist, who now lives halfway between the US and Chile, where everything is “slower” and have time to put “feet on the ground” and thinking about his art, he says that his transformation into a canvas and brush painter was by “need”.
“I lived in a very small place where I wanted to paint (with spray) on fabric, on canvas and I didn’t have the space to do it. So I was forced to use a brush”he says, while showing in the works that he is now exhibiting in Miami the spray touches he makes to give them a different effect and not forget.
The color of his paintings is the same as the murals. Vibrant colors that cover the pieces that make up their human figures and give them a multicolored appearance, similar to that of harlequin costumes.
“I started painting with colors because, well, painting in the street I realized that one of the most important things is to attract attention, how we have to compete against advertising and with many things. That is why I focused on the human figure and in the colors, because it is a way to draw attention and once you have people’s attention, we can put the message”He says.
to their 36 yearswhen he thinks about his future, he sees no other world than the artistic one and what hurts him the most is injustice in all its forms, including the lack of opportunities.
EFE
