Carlos Leppe (1952-2015). Un ícono de la contracultura

Carlos Leppe passed away this Thursday, October 15, because of a pancreatitis. He was 63 years old and considered as one of the driving artist of corporal art and performance in Chile, as well as of the expansion of videoart and diverse artistic expressions of the counterculture during the dictatorship. He stood up, in turn, as image consultant and art director in advertising and television. He always had a critical politicized attitude about art and its environment.

Artist Carlos Leppe shared some experiences with artista of the Advanced Guard Scene, positioning him as a Chilean art model not only in the dictatorship, but also in the last 25 years. It’s not unusual that the cultural world in Chile regret this precipitous and in-advance loss, because his contributions to artistic production won’t accompany us anymore.

Carlos Leppe studies Degree in Arts in the Universidad de Chile University in 1971. Hee was student of Carlos Altamirano y Eugenio Dittborn, which would afterwards share path in the named Advaced Guard Scene. Happening de Gallinas (1974) was the play which he invaded the Chilean artistic world, breaking every aesthetic relation with the formal and institutional. He was transformed into a model of the performance and the BodyArt in our country. At the samen time, he developed a pleasure for video, which he needed to record his artistic actions. This carried him out to improve this technique until becoming one of the first videomaker in Chile.

He was distanced from the traditional aesthetic regulation y explored the limits of his own body to surprise and question the audience. He was part of the Advanced Guard Scene, but his work not only pretended to debate about the political and social state of Chile in the 70s and 80s, but also to investigate about his personal history: ties with his mother, his body, and sexuality. His career wasn’t just focused on art and the performance, but also with other areas such as advertising and television, practicing as art director and image consultant for different political campaigns and soap operas.

His work allowed to develop a critic thought within arts in Chile, since during the dictatorship a constant repression and censoring were suffered in every artistic institution. His work was directly linked with the one of international artists that saw in art a manner of visual communication, combining it with video and photography, as in the case of Joseph Beuys’ work. An artwork can be seen from different points of views that can be investigated by means of its particular aesthesis and also, as how an artist exploded other material source to carry his message and work beyond the established-by-the-institutionality canons.

The corporal and of-intervention work that Leppe went on were revolutionaries. The images of these actions were captured in a series of work. One of the most relevant was Molde de Yeso o Sala de Espera, in which was possible to see the artist almost fully plastered, or singing opera while his face was disfigured. He broke up with traditionalism and put himself as the media support. Carlos Leppe’s work wasn’t just revolutionary for the Chilean artistic standards of this period, but they were brave for the politic moment lived in Chile: a place where censoring predominated in every artistic circuit; where every exploration or proposal since the institutional was potentially dangerous for every artist; and a place where questioning to the sexual wasn’t played well by big part of the audience.

His glance and questionings to the artist’s place and the game with his body will remain registered as one of the most important contribution to the History of Chilean Art, as well as for being a precursor of new forms of arts unknown in the country so far: Body Art and the videoart.  The way he worked with his body as a main means to express his work was something that influenced so many artists, and, unquestionably will keep doing.

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