Cartagena Memories Series
Welcome to the remembered world of Jorge Yances- described in Nashville Arts Magazine as the imperceptible interplay between past & present, reality and fantasy; a powerful visual mirroring of the Latin literary tradition of Realismo Mágico.
Discovering more than mere nostalgia for the artist’s native city (Cartagena, Colombia), the viewer catches glimpses of the narrative, a silent procession of centuries-old stories and people embedded into the architecture, seemingly undetected by modern Cartagena characters. The effect is playful and tender, and disturbing. “This is more than paint on a canvas,” Yances says. “It is the visual urging to detect the power of the stories that surround us.”
Then, just as the viewer embraces Yances’ altered sense of place, the artist again startles the senses. Like the film director whose expansive camera work slowly moves the audience closer and closer to capture subtleties, Yances moves the viewer into direct encounters with the complexity of the walls.
While the ghostly images of people remain scattered, these vibrant and textured walls reveal multiple layers of reality – washings of paint, one over the other, combined in an abstract weather-hardened collection of angry graffiti, postings melted by time into the surface or ripped away, and always, the draped and curled or hanging wires, symbolizing the reality of modern life and the efforts of neighbors to tap into the electricity of others. Anchored at one end, they hang sadly or flail wildly in the wind. Then, as the explosion of colors and textures and pleasure in abstraction woos the senses, Yances changes the narrative again, forcing the viewer inside the structure itself.
