BUENOS AIRES NOCTURNO
acrylic on canvas
45 x 92 inches
NIGHT.
In 2004 painter Luciano Goizueta created a small, 9 x 12 inch piece of a city at night. This particular painting sparked a beginning in the artist’s fascination with painting nightscapes – especially since it was the very first piece he had ever sold at an exhibition. This piece opened up many themes that Goizueta explores to this day: time, light, melancholy and relativity. It was the beginning of a larger exploration of work, not simply a exercise in the studio.
“Of course at that time I did not know that this piece would have a special meaning to me many years later, or that there would come series as unrealistic, underlying or night.”
Chronologically, the first subjects Goizueta painted were pieces like this small one that started it all, paintings that mimicked philosphically the work of Edward Hopper, a tremendous influence on Goizueta’s work. Images in which the extended camera shutter allows light to leave contrails; then unreality: static sunrise or sunset, melancholy portraits of the city, some of my distant and Buenos Aires other San Jose a silent, abstracted images.
“I discovered that he (Edward Hopper) painted on black instead of white as I did, he drew light from shadow. I understood then that this was the natural way of understanding light, that light falls upon things, not the reverse. The painter need not paint shadows; they should leave the shadows untouched.
With this discovery my paintings took on a new dimension, a more logical order, a less forced realism. Over time most of my paintings were painted on black…”
The piece Buenos Aires Night marked the first time Goizueta took this technique to a larger, grander level creating an expanse of darkness, cut in with point of light from a bustling city that the viewer can imagine themselves a part of or simply observing from a more removed perspective.
AUSENCIA II
acrylic on canvas
47 x 70 inches
DAY.
(artist’s statement)
The blue sky of Costa Rica as seen between December and February has always fascinated me. It takes on a very particular celestial hue, especially in the early morning. Throughout a few series I have experimented with using the sky as an element to decontextualize the primary subjects of my paintings, in this way I am creating a heightened sense of importance towards certain objects or situations. For example, a building set against a blue-sky background seems almost unreal, almost as if it has been cut out of its environment making it seem more graphic. I then started to do this with an abandoned vehicle or a city street.
Much of my work involves the perception of time, how it changes everything, degrades things and leads to one recalling things differently than they were. Time breaks down all the structures we rely upon as humans.
Linked to this idea of time began to explore memory, it occurred to me to make an analogy between the flood and forgetfulness. I am rummaging through my photos I became aware of the limitations of memory, trying to rebuild my memories from my past images. So I gave myself the task of finding images that will help me rebuild an experience, a specific time. Then I flooded the images, with the idea that something could be filled while omitting what was there.
Through this process I realized that I had been exploring this concept for many years through the visual metaphor of a “blackout.”