Elvis
Luna:
Amazonian Visions
Wednesday, 2nd July - Saturday, 2nd August, 2003
Double Threat , 2002, Giclée on Canvas (ed. of 200) 60 x 42 cm - £210.00
The October Gallery presents one of Peru's foremost up-and-coming contemporary artists, Elvis Luna. Working both in oils and with watercolour, Luna creates intricate images of the Amazonian rainforests, revealing a profound understanding of the scientific complexities of the interrelated flora and fauna and the spiritual subtleties of this unique - and today increasingly threatened - environment.
Born in Pullcapa, Peru, in 1970, Elvis Luna studied painting with Pablo Amaringo, the visionary shaman and artist who founded the USKO-AYAR Amazonian School of Painting. He has since set up his own art schools, the Green World Children's Amazon Art Schools in San Jose and Pucallpa, where he provides an artistic education to over 600 children, guiding them to develop through their painting an understanding and respect for the Amazonian Environment. His work has encouraged a new generation of artists to document the flora, fauna and cultural lore of the Peruvian Amazon and to preserve the traditional knowledge of useful and medicinal plants of the region through landscape painting.
Luna works in the plein air tradition, often painting in the forest by night to capture images of the real, and hyper-real. His work combines detailed naturalism with visions of the Amazonian spirit world. His recent 'Amazon Mythology' series form complex narratives, each dramatising the interactions of shamans with the imanent spirits and energy systems alive in the forest.
Luna's work has been touring Europe and South America for the last decade, showing most recently in Florida. He was first exhibited in the UK at the highly acclaimed October Gallery exhibition, 'Inner Visions: Artists of the Peruvian Amazon', in 1999, which formed part of the October Gallery's long-running series of art and artists from shamanic cultures. This latest exhibition shows some of the new developments in his work since that time, focussing on apperently simple representations of the rain-forest environment but always with an underlying narrative sub-text that hints at deeper, less obvious interpretative strands. Thus, Double Threat, above, presents two playful monkeys unaware of the lurking eyes of the Jaguar behind waiting to pounce - or perhaps the hidden presence represents Sachamama - the spirit of the forest itself - watching over her creatures, yet herself imperilled by the logging and deforestation that places the rich but still fragile eco-system under threat of extinction.
A series of educational
workshops will run during the course of the exhibition, exploring aspects
of Latin American culture in conjunction with local schools and London-based
Latin American community organisations.
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The October Gallery
is particularly grateful for the generous help and sponsorship provided
by:
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