Les Egusquiza – “Iré sin quedarme”

Reception: 8th July, 2022

_VIGILGONZALES Cusco - Pampa del Castillo 455, Cusco

VIGIL GONZALES is pleased to present Iré sin quedarse, a solo exhibition by artist Les Egusquiza (Lima, 1988), in our galleries in Cusco. The exhibition gravitates conceptually on the axes of landscape recognition through memory and exploration through its link with materials. 

Egusquiza's paintings reflect part of his thoughts and emotions, alluding to processes he has gone through but also to the space he has inhabited. The reference to crossing mountains implies going through winding roads - the Andes, for example, the backbone of Latin America - and walking towards them can be just as rough as the journey towards the depths of oneself. She makes a reflection through the landscape grounded in her deepest feelings. These mountains embody her inner self and the desire that motivates her to explore is nothing more than the exercise of searching for herself.

To create the works she uses cinematographic resources of perspective and intersects them with painting, linking them with her intuition, memory, reflection and the immediate. Through a series of experiments as "free exercises" she films hills, clouds, floors, colors and organizes this material to make sense of her experience, experimenting with the places she travels and creating new scenarios through her paintings. 

She resorts to portraying mountains and roads traveled throughout her life, where in recent years she has begun to collect different types of earth to be used as pigments in her works. This link with space and the materiality that surrounds it is reflected in this process of observation and selection where she introduces new colors, materials and pigments to her palette through the collection of soils. These are combined with acrylics and create new pieces that condense his material and experiential link through this same and the journey of the space where he obtains them. Egusquiza creates a relationship with these materials which create properties to be used as pigments or colors in the works, not by the same attribute of the collected earth itself but by the process of collection and the relationship with it through his experimentation in the walks. By showing these properties through colors, she also tells her story. 

Finally, the choice of names responds to the temporal process of these journeys and the transit.  She refers to being there or being part of that journey on the one hand referring to the walks made, as well as to the journeys to know the depths of herself and her history. The series of 4 small works play with the idea of being and not being, the fact of being transitory within a space or situation of life, of a physical journey as well as towards herself and the option of mobility that they have between these.