1969 – Born in Santiago de Chile. Resides and works in Montevideo.
“The challenge of suggesting a new reality has led me to explore the contradictions and the extremes by means of non traditional pictorial techniques”
Jaime Tobella says that he might even go back to figurative expression, but that “…. in abstraction human creativity can still be explored with greater freedom”. His work is a process, a laboratory. “For a painting cannot be only an impact; that vanishes”. He is interested in extremes and opposing elements, in what is intimate and what is foreign, in constant motion, in the risk of living, nature and climate. The construction of a new reality is a challenge, and he even dares to suggest new paradigms in connection with space and time. “There exists an ethical concern, that of developing painting being aware of its scope and esthetical objectives. The work must not tell everything at the first look; there is a visual way to go through the composition, and it also has a subliminal charge”. “Each work takes long months, years, and it requires a laboratory, sometimes the exposure to the elements. I use materials that do not come from the traditional art world, and thus I endeavor to ask painting to change its palette and to explore what is new”. “I learn from my findings and also from my errors, I drive away from the notion of traditional beauty, but I do not approach ugliness in opposition to that, either. It is an obsession to attain a new reality. Neither good, nor ugly, bad or pretty. I leave other forces to have a bearing on the outcome, such as climate, chemical factors, the materials”. He signs with a numerical code and in reverse, because “the abstract should not bear a common daily label”.
ACADEMIC TRAINING AND TEACHING
He sudied at the National School of Fine Arts of the University of the Republic as from 1990.
At present he is a teacher, at the same university institution, Chair of the First Period and Grade 1 at Carlos Musso Workshop.
EXHIBITS AND PRIZES
2006 - Design and Mural Painting, Rio Negro, Uruguay
2006 - Design and Painting, Falla Valencia, Montevideo
2006 - Individual Exhibit – Lecture Hall, Law School
2006 - Individual Exhibit – Pareja Room, IENBA
2006 - Individual Exhibit – “Symptomatology of Reality” – Museo del Azulejo (Glazed Tile Museum)
2005 - Took part in the Stuttgart-Frankfurt-Montevideo Exchange Project
2005, 2006, 2007- Mural Painting Exhibition, Paso de los Toros, San Gregorio de Polanco
2005 - Mural Painting, Treinta y Tres, National Heritage Day.
2004 - Individual Exhibit, Pareja Room
2004 - Collective Exhibition, Cabildo, Montevideo – Scholarship holders of the School of Fine Arts
2003 - Collective Exhibit at the Entrance Hall of the Montevideo Town Hall.
2002 - Took part in the shows co-organized by COFAC-IEN and the School of Fine Arts in cities all over the country.
2001 - Was invited to an exhibit organized by the Centro Provisional de Artes Plásticas y Diseño in the city of Havana, Cuba
2000 - Collective exhibit, IENBA, in celebration of the creation of the Faculty (College) of Arts
1999 - Collective exhibit at IENBA, held at the College of Sciences, in celebration of its creation.
1999 - Collective exhibit at Seveso Workshop (IENBA) in the city of Treinta y Tres.
1999 - Chosen to participate in the group of young Uruguayan plastic artists who were to be present at the 7th edition of the Young Painting Chandon Biennale in the Argentine Republic.
1998 - Individual exhibit of paintings and volumes in metal and stone at Libri Arti Gallery
1997 - Took part in the project for Un...