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Colectivo de Artistas Contemporáneos en Antigua: C.A.C.A.

by Michael Tallon

To understand the sheer, unadulterated joy that the beautiful monkeys of C.A.C.A. bring to my life, you first have to recognize and accept the secret of laughter and reinvention. I’ll try to explain my thoughts on the matter succinctly:

Art is born free, but too often is culled and brought to markets dominated by the money and ego of folks who wouldn’t know beauty if it snuck up and bit them on the ass. In Guatemala the limited number of wealthy patrons — all of whom know one another, do business with one another, rely on one another and yet are constantly attacking one another — was a perfectly evil-laboratory for such foolishness. Art for the patron class came prepackaged with sniping and silliness. That reality did the nation no favors when it came to vibrancy in cultural expression for, say, five hundred years — give or take a genius or two a century. 

Now, under certain circumstances, such concentrated — yet divisive — patronage could lead to rival schools, contested ideals, champions and the foment of battle. Sadly, the opposite dynamic happened here for generations. Over the centuries, it may have been an over-adherence to the principles of Old Europe.  More recently it was certainly shaped by 36 years of civil conflict and the fear that such a reign engendered. Patrons have long been unwilling to rock the boat, lest their politics or religious affiliation be called into question in ways that might upset their social status. Thus, the marketplace of ideas became self-policing and self-stultifying. By the time of the peace accords, most Guatemalan artists who were selling had far more in common with the Hang-In-There-Baby school of Kitten-In-A-Tree formalism than anything resembling the spark of human genius. 

Now, please take note — we are not at all saying that vibrant, beautiful work did not exist, we’re saying that only those who diligently stayed within the box could expect to thrive well enough on their paintings to feed their families and get drunk at the beach when required for proper spiritual rejuvenation. That was the game: The galleries, museums and private mansions were filled with old masters and aging impostors. 

That’s been changing in the past decade, and La Cuadra has been doing our best to chronicle the work that has grown in fields once so barren that they seemed beyond salvation. In the past two years we’ve been increasingly convinced that it is artists like those in C.A.C.A. who have been, if you’ll forgive us,  fertilizing the soil with humor, vision, new hope and proficient technique. As such, their work pulls us in. With them we feel welcomed by friends as fellow travelers on the path of artistic expression and exploration. But what we love most is the combination, the balance, they have achieved between the joy of individual execution and collective reinforcement and support. Together, they have each found a way to shake off the pressures of a marketplace that has long demanded fidelity to safe ground. 

While their work is beautiful, thank drunk-baby Jesus and all the sodden Saints that they are fleeing from the world of decorative bullshit like scalded cats. They, like many of their generation, are gulping in the fresh air of creation, rather than the sewer gas of wealthy and timid expectations. Together, they are truly a feral movement — as irreverent as youth, as slick as sexuality, and as fresh as brand new hominids up in the trees hurling poop down onto the tired old men of tired old conventions. The artists of C.A.C.A. take their work seriously, but not themselves. They realize, I’d argue, that their primary job is to laugh at conventional wisdom and by so doing, sounding the bell of cultural reinvention.

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Sueños del Trópico, Lucía Morán Giracca

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Colaboración, Juan Pablo Canale and Rodolfo de León

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Bien Trabajado, Juan Pablo Canale

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La Cueva, Ancris Garcia Cabezas

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Gone Fishing, Christel Brenninkmeijer

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Victoria, Elvira Méndez

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Paraíso, Rodolfo de León

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Advenires VIII, Alexis Rojas

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La Protectora, Gustavo Estrada

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La Lotería - by Luis González Palma

As featured in La Cuadra Magazine, Volume VIII, Issue 6. November / December 2014. Story by Michael Tallon.

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La Lotería, Images by Luis González Palma

In December and January, Mesón Panza Verde will be hosting an exhibition of works by Luis González Palma. For those unfamiliar with this intellectually and spiritually penetrating artist, we offer a small sampling of his photography here. These individual images are taken from a larger work entitled, La Lotería. La Lotería is a game, similar to bingo, played in Mexico and Central America. The game is played with a deck of cards, each with an iconic image (The Sun, The Deer, The Star, The Fish, The Flag, et al.). In this work, Palma makes a choice to represent Guatemalan culture in its many faces and guises. At the same time, it also explores the syncretic interplay of Mayan and Iberian civilizations, as well as the interrelationships between Guatemala and its neighboring nations. 

Please make your way to the Galería at Mesón Panza Verde to explore the fertile mind of this unique artist. The show will run through January, 2015 at Mesón Panza Verde, which is located on 5a Avenida Sur, #19 in Antigua, Guatemala. 

Additionally, we would like you to consider picking up a copy of our latest issue here. 

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El Pescado

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El Sol

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La Corona

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El Ángel