July 29 2008
Art: Chadid — Sur Ataka!
posted by Steven Shaw at 11:52 am
Sur Ataka! — Opening: Tues 29 July 5.30–7pm at Satellite Gallery
Chilean artist Chadid is currently holding his first solo exhibition in New Zealand: Sur Ataka! a bit of Southern American culture is on at Auckland’s Satellite Gallery until 10 August. Chadid’s art is distinctly South American, with a mix of bold colours, skeletons, anatomical drawings and text. This is great stuff, so if you’re in Auckland, get along there and take a closer look .
From the press release: Chadid’s vibrant work features characters with malformed limbs and leering grins, making for bold, humorous and violent work. Text, often entirely in Spanish, is an intriguing complement to his already diagram-like paintings. Statements such as “Basquiat is dead and happy” reveal his deeper understanding of the power of this graffiti-like expressionism.
“I was raised in a small city (Arica), in the north of Chile, very close to Peru. A place where the colours became part of a highway with different representations of smells; which I think is were I got my colour influences. I used to go to the markets in Peru and all the locals were wearing bright fluorescent ponchos, and the food was very unique. All the trivial things had colours that you could never imagine they would have.
My childhood, I could say that it was the best time in my life. The one that every child wishes for because I had all the toys that I could possibly imagine and some I couldn’t. My father owned a toy importer company that brought the world of Hong Kong to Chile.
After the toys, came ATARI which, I could say, changed my life. Not because I was a fanatic player but because of the graphics that amused me so much I decided to study graphic design later on. This was very important in my life.
-José Chadid
Satellite Gallery — Corner of St Benedicts Street and Newton Road (Entrance St Benedict’s St), Newton, Auckland