artnexus #103

In the Chilean art scene, Gonzalo Díaz (Santiago, 1947) is a figure of great significance, both in terms of his production and for his long dedication to teaching as a university professor. He is connected, along with other Chilean artists, to the “Forward Scene,” (Escena de avanzada) the label applied by Nelly Richard to those who in the 1970s and 80s developed new ways to move in the art field under the conditions of repression implanted by the military dictatorship that took over the country in 1973. During those years, Díaz parodied traditional art models and used widely circulating advertising images to create irreverent iconographies, such as the Klenzo box, an illustration embedded in the collective imaginary that he appropriated for the arts, seeking to shift and detour usual discursive practices. Díaz also adopted conceptual proposals as he experimented with new supports and materials, with neon light becoming one of his most intensively used resources. Using walls as his supports and deploying the colors that neon light can provide, for Díaz, a way to reengage with his past as a painter. Many artists have used neon in their work and taking his cue from the use of the material in advertising, Díaz installed his works titled El neón es miseria, El neón es delirio (Neon is Misery, Neon is Delirium, 2012) on the façades of two Santiago de Chile galleries, Metropolitana and D21. These same spaces exhibited, for a year, his neon signs where the last word changed every month to read, in sequence: misery, delirium, heart attack, amnesia, secret, dementia, fainting, blasphemy, misfortune, fascist, prayer, and heartbeat. Díaz takes advantage of neon’s visual impact on everyday life to emphasize a series of notions under the general conceptual umbrellas of misery and delirium. Precisely from one of those signs, installed not inside a gallery but in space for public everyday circulation, comes the image on our cover. 
IVONNE PINI