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Jorge de León

In Challenging Times

Guatemala City, Guatemala





    
    






Bandera nuestra,
a tí juramos
devoción perdurable,
lealtad perenne,
honor y sacrificio y esperanza
hasta la hora de nuestra muerte.
En nombre de la sangre y de la tierra
juramos mantener tu excelsitud
sobre todas las cosas,
en los prósperos días y en los días adversos;
velar y aún morir
porque ondees perpetuamente
sobre una patria digna.





– Jura a la Bandera de Guatemala

In his second solo show at Proyectos Ultravioleta, Jorge de León (Guatemala City, 1976) presents a new body of paintings that capture the complexities of our current day to day. 





Working across a variety of media which includes performance, drawing, sculpture and installation, the new paintings by de León are based in an extensive digital image archive that he has been amassing for over 20 years, and sourced from newsprint, the pulp press and digital media. The archive itself came to be after de León asked himself if there was anything that all of his fellow countrymen and women share, independent of their socioeconomic differences, and the realization that the only commonplace are the press images that are consumed no matter where one stands in society. 





Although the paintings featured in “En los prósperos días” (In the Prosperous Days) -his first solo show at Proyectos Ultravioleta, in 2017) were based in images of quotidian life in Guatemala, the paintings of “Y en los días adversos” (And in the Adverse Days) have a global optic. These new works use images documenting the advance of the COVID-19 pandemic, the quarantines and forced lock-downs, and all those parallel events across the world that have marked this unprecedented year as a starting point; from the Black Lives Matter protests to the environmental catastrophes caused by industrial exploitation. The result is a new series of paintings that adeptly synthesize this post-pandemic reality in what has been a year like no other. Seen together, the works present a convoluted portrayal of the current state of affairs in the world, characterized by uncertainty, violence, and chaos. And yet, despite the hardships of our day to day, de León is able to find moments of humor and idiosyncrasy, inviting viewers to reflect upon our current existence (and the images we consume), in hopes that we can collectively imagine a new reality.

            

            

                                    Other exhibitions by Jorge de León at Proyectos Ultravioleta: