Busacca Gallery

Artist Alexander Sutulov was born in Concepción, Chile, in 1962. He attended the Institute of Contemporary Art in Santiago from 1980 to 1984 and continued his study of art at the University of Utah from 1985 to 1987 with emphasis in painting, drawing, printmaking and sculpture. From 1988 to 1990 he worked and collaborated at artist co-op Artspace and Stonehenge, where he researched hand built techniques with stoneware, porcelain, wood, and metal. He worked as an independent artist at the University of New Mexico Printmaking Department from 1990 to 1992. His work at the time with various printing techniques was focused in the use of second generation images. He continued his graphic work with Atelier Sutulov-Gienger from 1992 to 1994 where in conjunction with Black & Blue Press, Golden, New Mexico, he specialized in the use of positive and negative plates for hand printed lithographic limited editions. From 1994 to 1996 he divided his work between Chile and the United States applying his printmaking experience in digital generated images for mural painting and lithographic limited editions. Since his return to Chile in 1994, the artist has been part of a variety of corporate and institutional art projects such as: CHILE Maritime Vision Mural Project presented at Florence Biennale 2003, Gasco Energy Sculpture Project commissioned by Gasco gas company in Santiago and the recently inaugurated History of Chilean Mining Mural, 3 story digital mural commissioned by Chilean Bureau of Mines and the University of Concepción. Since 1990 he has shown in selected Group and Solo Exhibitions in Argentina, Australia, Canada, Chile, Dominican Republic, England, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Slovenia, Taiwan and United States. Artist's statement: The introduction of a square format is an extension of a second column of the original 16 vertical panels. The gradual increment of abstraction establishes a new pictorial field where our original "landscapes" become synthesized into various forms of ambiance. The focus now has become more lyrical in the sense of rhythm and movement obeying the natural laws of the four elements. Boundaries are suddenly juxtaposed by transitions, where our notion of air is a bridge to our notion of water and so forth. Tension and distension become a sense of transformation, an instant of what is to come. After twelve years of not exhibiting in his country, Chilean artist Alexander Sutulov presents during the months of December and January his unprecedented graphic work at the Philippi Museum in Valdivia, Chile. Taking into account the exhibitor's international repertoire present in more than 15 countries, draws attention his particular interest to exhibit in a museum primarily devoted to natural sciences. Great part of his work in the past ten years has been focused in iconography lingered to Chilean landscape morphology and its symbiosis with pre-Hispanic cultures, discourse of which he already established a point of reference with the History of Chilean Mining Mural inaugurated at the University of Concepción in 2005. The exhibition titled: "Chile: Tierra de la Frontera" or "Borderland Chile" considers two general themes, the first one referred as "Native Chile" is a horizontal vision of pre-Hispanic culture from northern to southern continental Chile including native flora characterized by each region of the countries various latitudes. Lastly, Huilquilemu Series, Mapuche word derived from wilki: thrush and lemu: forest, is an exploration of native tree morphology such as the Chilean Oak, Coihue and Arrayán in the form of intricate silhouettes where its spacial reorganization suggest organic value inherent to Chilean southern landscape. In relation to the artists leitmotif and project genesis, Sutulov addresses naturalist Alexander von Humboldt's scientific view of the new world in the nineteenth century. Although he never travelled to Chile himself, his influence and support to Bavarian artist Johann Moritz Rugendas had a great impact in the monumental work of Romantic artist's endless topographic descriptions of an emancipated new republic. Museum's Chief Curator, Adrian Silva is enthusiast to discover artist whose visual language is empathetic with an important academic community where the Museum has an active role and reputation. More so considering on the premises of the Austral University where the museum is located, environmental research is at it's peak where for example, countries dendrochronology and bio diversity scientist are most regarded. In this respect, the work of Sutulov comes in a crucial moment where a series of questions and debates are been generated regarding sustainability and conservation of national patrimony so much for indigenous cultures as for native flora and fauna associated to Chile's national territory. One can describe a mise-en-scènes where combined pictorial and graphic language define a new genre in the realm of digital painting. In no doubt these large format works digitally printed on 100% rag paper, bring together diverse disciplines like drawing, printmaking and painting where its surface richness is an admirable synthesis, and more so, when speaking of landmarks associated to a cultural heritage.

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landscape_art

Landscape art depicts the surface of the earth, but there are other sorts of landscapes, such as moonscapes. The word landscape is from the Dutch, landschap meaning a sheaf, a patch of cultivated ground. The word entered the English vocabulary of the connoisseur in the late 17th century. The Chinese tradition of "pure" landscape, in which the minute human figure simply gives scale and invites the viewer to participate in the experience, was well established by the time the oldest surviving ink paintings were executed. Landscape painting was the "chief artistic creation of the nineteenth century", with the result that in the following period people were "apt to assume that the appreciation of natural beauty and the painting of landscape is a normal and enduring part of our spiritual activity. Landscape observations ranging from highly accurate and scientific to outlandish or fantastic. These observations are documented in the landscape artworks they produced. Landscape art and landscape painting was manifest in more purely formal terms, such as color, freed from objective context, and a reduction of form to basic geometric designs. Painting is a mode of expression, and the forms are numerous. Drawing, composition or abstraction and other aesthetics may serve to manifest the expressive and conceptual intention of the practitioner. Paintings can be naturalistic and representational (as in a still life or landscape painting.