The gaze as scopic drive pores over the devastation, the unformed and abject in the inorganic state and in all the enigmatic aspects that feed the death drive. The fictional and the real in the pictorical representation of the apocalyptic and catastrophic are powerful triggers to generate the tension between the attraction and repulsion that drive the spectator’s emotions. In images of strange beauty, dealing with cruelty and the tearing apart, the injury or mutilation of the body, or perhaps the crumbling down of an imaginary space represented on canvas, the painter transforms the death drive into figurability. One of the modalities of contemporary Mexican painting seems troubling to us, as it displays the self-destructive potential of human beings both individually and collectively, bearing witness to angst and hopelessness.
Apocalyptic, catastrophic and silent representations in contemporary Mexican paintingĪdriana Zapett, Edwina Moreno y María Eugenia Garmendia
