The Image Burns

Imaginart presents “The Image Is Burning,” an exhibition by visual artist Álvaro Oyarzún (Santiago, Chile, 1960). Imaginart’s exhibition partially recreates the original format of “The Image Is Burning” with the aim of commemorating the events that shook Chile during the dictatorship and the difficulties faced by visual artists during that time. The exhibition opens on April 15 and will be open until May 28.

Álvaro Oyarzún first presented “The Image Burns. Of the Essential in Love” in 1985 at the Galería Arte Actual. The figurative works on display, with a marked erotic tone, were harshly criticized by some visitors, who called them pornographic and offensive to morality. As a result, some pieces were removed, and the exhibition closed less than twenty-four hours later.

Oyarzún’s paintings convey the youthful rebellion of someone who finds in the body and desire a space for freedom, but also a driving force for revolution. The works that comprise “La Imagen Arde” (The Image Is Burning) express the ambivalence of the body and sexuality, depicting them as a means of escape from a suffocating and oppressive context. Sexual abuse is a recurring tool of power structures that practice torture. And it is through this framework that Álvaro Oyarzún deploys a distinctive political satire and uneuphemistically criticizes Pinochet’s dictatorship.