Felipe Bunster´s painting pounds us like the percussion section at a rock concert. The beat is vigorous and palpable, striking our vital organs as well as riveting the eye. His images are aggressive and formidable: symbols of the age and milieu which he chronicles in rampant brushstrokes. Even his use of color reinforces his message, a message reflecting the ferocity of contemporaneity. The work is a visual version of the music of the era, the sounds and songs that have reverberated in his ear since youth.
Felipe sallies forth as a knight errant in his quest to express his essence in paint. His is the essence of every maturing youth whose dissatisfaction with the ‘system’ has no practical form of expression. As a hereditary beneficiary of the ‘system’, he knows it inside out. He has chosen to become its critic: he lives outside its sacrosanct perimeter, knows how to play it when necessary, recognizes its perks, but chooses to paint his way out of it.
As a painter, he has his debts, as do all artists. Few Chilean painters can escape the cosmic vision of Roberto Matta, whose otherworldly creatures, fluid backgrounds, and ping-pong game between the past and the future leave a turbulent present for the viewer to resolve for himself. Bunster does not seek to emulate Matta’s metaphysics. His backgrounds, however, have reminiscences of the master’s favorite flavors. It is to his credit that he aims for the best in a national tradition that provides more monotony than variety.
His palette is stark and strident, shocking to an eye accustomed to the classics like Matisse or Monet. The work has the bite of certain poster art, designed to maximize its impact by shock. Elements of graphic design pop in and out of the work. There is no attempt, however, to seduce the art lover with gentle caresses of color, no interest in being ‘decorative’ or user-friendly. Bunster can be playful, but his game is a rough one, not attuned to the delicacies of the upscale market place.
The artist has created a personal arsenal of symbols. Distortion is a major source of his firepower. Contrast is blatant in both the placement of color and the juxtapositioning of symbols. The first impression is one of constrained chaos, of an abandonment of clarity and cohesion. At first glance, there is an excess of information, too many points of interest competing for the viewer’s attention. Each viewer has his antennas set in the channels of past experience: each antenna is trained to focus on a variant of what has customarily been its principal area of attention. Bunster’s work falls outside of that preordained selection of imagery. This confrontational approach means that the viewer has to enlarge the boundaries of his past experience to incorporate the new material the artist offers. Some have that capacity, other do not. A portion of those who can, will find a clue, a hint of previously acceptable experience in a fragment of a painting. It is upon that fragment that the viewer must build his dialogue with the painting, establish a common ground on which to incorporate the painting in its entirety into the scope of his experience.
Perhaps it is a splash of color that elicits the retina’s approval. Perhaps one of the images or symbols awakens curiosity as it transits the tunnel from eye to mind. The viewer with an open attitude can take these fleeting perceptions as signals confirming the validity of further evaluation. Step by step, the wary viewer enters into a tenuous dialogue with the work, and from this interaction, the work is impregnated with a latent magnetism that can facilitate the approach of a future viewer. In turn, the viewer is imbued with a heightened receptivity that will permit him to look upon the next painting he confronts with a more generous attitude.
Bunster’s paintings are challenging to the eye and disquieting to the mind. They are confrontational: stepping stones to understanding the changes that engulf us at every moment of our lives. They provide information, stepping stones to what the changes entail, how to contend with them, and how to discard our fears and recognize them for what they are: he offers us signposts to navigating in today’s world in all its infinite complexity and discontinuity. We should be grateful to Felipe for forewarning us of the dangers and delights of this tumultuous world we inhabit.
The true mark of an artist is his ability to move society forward. Felipe through his visual warnings, alerts us to this challenge. His art is provocative. Let yourself be provoked and his work will have accomplished its purpose. The reaction is in the eye of the beholder. Expression in any form of art aims at expanding our consciousness. Felipe’s plea for transformation, however, is aimed at our existential register rather than our spiritual person. His is a powerful wake-up call to incorporate a broader spectrum of the colors that can enrich an everyday life, of the symbols that can facilitate our understanding of it.
Tunquén – August 2016