The view of David Orbea from Guayaquil in Casa del Barrio: the exhibition will run for another week

At the age of 37, visual artist David Orbea has made a long journey through galleries and art spaces in the country, including the Anthropological Museum of Contemporary Art (MAAC), the Quito Contemporary Art Center and DPM. But until this Saturday, July 8, you can find his most recent exhibition, Trópico Informal, at Casa del Barrio (Panama Street).

Orbea is a visual arts technologist from the Technological Institute of Arts of Ecuador (ITAE) and holds a degree in Advertising and Marketing from the U. de Guayaquil. In 2016 he took third place in the Salón de Julio.

Trópico Informal is composed by Rodolfo Kronfle Chávez. “His pictorial exercises were characterized by the simplification of the forms found in a wide variety of communication registers, from press photographs to commercial products. In some of his series, this goal takes on formal features related to abstraction, while retaining the ability to comment on the surrounding reality,” Kronfle explains of the artist’s previous works.

And he highlights the fact that Orbea has honored informality in this exhibition, ignoring the fickleness that characterizes abstraction to “rather explore the registers of what we might call dirty abstraction, which goes beyond the underlying geometry as its only importance to something essential of the identity of their original referents”.

What’s the concept behind it?

The exhibition is the result of research I’ve been doing since the pandemic and part of my fixation on the city where I live, Guayaquil. And the series that is part of the show is called Postcards because it’s the way I depict the city, but obviously from my perspective as a visual artist and especially from my practice, which is painting, geometric abstraction and color. . I’ve mapped out what the color palette looks like even in the city and whatever geometric patterns I’ve found, especially on the facades of buildings, homes, and commercial properties.

What’s behind the name Informal Tropic?

Because of the location of our city, the climate and everything it means to be in Guayaquil. The word informal also plays with terminology and is applied to painting, in this case a bit looser, with more texture and even ‘dirtier’, if you want to put it that way. It is the opposite of formal, which is neat, perfect and sharp, as they are called in art history.

How did you capture this data that is now translated into your artistic production?

I had the idea of ​​a postcard, like when you travel and get a glimpse of what the city was like, and these works are my form of a postcard of Guayaquil, with the colors, with its shapes. My creative processes take years and since 2016 I started to pay attention to certain external elements of the city, some street references and take pictures with a camera or with my mobile phone and save them. And when we were able to go out again after the pandemic, I returned to my tours of the center and south of Guayaquil, finding more material, until in 2021 I materialized my ideas and started painting.

How is the show designed and what experience do you want visitors to have?

The truth is that I am not much in favor of an order being issued, although I have been. I only suggest that they go through it, because for me that is essential, that they look without any reference to the works and that at some point they become familiar with the pieces, their colors and shapes because it is Guayaquil. At least among the inhabitants of Guayaquil, a certain degree of familiarity with the experience of seeing this exhibition must be born. At least that’s what I mean. And at the end there is a short video with the photos that inspired the paintings. That helps you close the show.

What are your next plans for the rest of 2023?

Today I also have the exhibition Mirar en pintura, in Cuenca, in a new space opened in that city called Informal. And in July I will be part of a collective exhibition in Mexico, along with other artists invited by the Trapo gallery in San Miguel de Allende. And from there the plan is to continue working, continue painting.