Agustín Bejarano
Culto (Jungla II), 2014Mixed media on canvas, 54 x 49.5 cm.
[…] The landscape has always been a complementary resource in the work of Agustín Bejarano. Ha has reinserted it at his convenience in his work, like he did with some codes and imageries of universal painting from the Renaissance to our days. It is the logical behavior of a daring re-contextual artist, of a clear exponent of that “American-born postmodernism” that some erroneously assure is in deep slump. However, it is not a conventional assimilation process in which exclusive experiences such as contemplation, ecstasies and the flight are reproduced, but of a reinsertion of the landscape destined to favor the consolidation of a symbol of the circumstantial, the crediting of a supplementary reference to what is permanent or circumstantial.
[…] The recurrence to the landscape is also associated to a philosophy of life and ideas -essential result of his philanthropic education and regional vocation-; a heritage in which the correspondence between man and his circumstances, whether urban or rural, are exalted and privileged; a correspondence that became outstanding since the very beginning of his career and which has done nothing but strengthen and add new arguments. A group of suggestive effects have emerged from the systematic exchange with the landscape genre, defining elements of his work that establish him within that principle of subordination to what is earthly. Among them stand out, because of their capacity of suggestion and scope of expression, the crackled effect as analogy of infertile land, a truly showy and unique resource that has always aroused great curiosity among the spectators […]. 1
1. David Mateo, “Evasion and permanence,” Landscape (Catalogue, Havana: Galería Habana, 2010).