BIOGRAFÍA

Francisco (Paco) León

Francisco (Paco) León nació en Santiago de Chile en 1972, un año más tarde se trasladó a vivir a Estocolmo, Suecia, con su familia. Luego de cinco años regresó a su país natal, pero mantuvo visitas constantes hacia el país europeo hasta 2005, cuando su padre retorna a Chile.

A los dieciocho años Paco viajó a Estados Unidos y realizó un programa en Science of Creative Intelligence (CIC) en Maharishi University, donde comienza a pintar, entre sus estudios y trabajos.

A su regreso decidió rse a la pintura, estudió un año en la Universidad Arcis y luego comenzó su etapa autodidacta en la que se nutrió de la experiencia e interés por aprender mediante la visita a talleres como La Brocha, lugar de encuentro y creación de los años 80 y 90.

Como ahijado del artista Hugo Marín recibió la meditación trascendental, herramienta fundamental en su desarrollo. Participa activamente de su taller donde aprende y también aplica sus conocimientos.

Vivió en Valparaíso donde se dedicó a la pintura, posteriormente regresa a Santiago para realizar su primera exposición en el Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (MAC) en 1996, hito que dio inicio a su carrera profesional como artista.

Dentro de su formación, Paco ha participado de diversos talleres colectivos como Taller La Brocha, el Generador, Taller Tuna y Taller Italia, en los que ha compartido con destacados artistas nacionales y ha generado diversas actividades vinculadas a la plástica nacional como pintor a contra corriente, según se autodefine.

Paco encuentra su lenguaje pictórico entre el paisaje y la abstracción, lo futurista y lo tribal, como alguna vez lo definieron en una entrevista de El Mercurio, “Un pintor, étnico futurista”.

La pintura es su técnica predilecta, la técnica con la que trabaja, pues también ha incursionado en el grabado, la fotografía, collage, escultura, dibujo y en lo editorial a través de su proyecto de poesía y collage “Polo sur-do”.

Ha expuesto en diversas muestras de Chile y también en el extranjero en países como China, Corea, Estados Unidos, Venezuela, Paraguay, Uruguay y Perú. Además su obra es parte de importantes colecciones privadas, corporativas y públicas, destaca el Museo de Arte Moderno de Chiloé (MAM), Universidad de Talca (UTAL), Compañía Cervecerías Unidas (CCU), Banca Suiza (UBS AG), Almagro Constructora, Polincay, South Cone Investment Advisor (CDC IXIS), Banco Interamericano del Desarrollo (BID).

– “La otra mirada” sala Marco Bonta, MAC.

– “Maestro y Disipulo” | Paco León y Hugo Marín La Raiz ancestral en la obra de dos generaciones, LA GALERIA, Hotel HYATT, Septiembre.

– “Persistencia del Paisaje en la Pintura Chilena” exposición en el M.A.C. Chile.

– “Arte de Hoy” | Exposición en el Parque Arauco (Selección del Concurso de Becas Amigos del Arte).

– “La Poética de Ver” | Centro Cultural El Generador. Lanzamiento y exposición de la monografía.

– “0000” | Proyecto Colectivo, Galería Ante Sala (Cecilia Palma). (Proyecto Generador).

– “Punto G” | Centro Cultural El Generador.

– “8 críticos 8 artistas” Galería Praxis.

– “Palabras Cruzadas” Oficinas Quasar.

– “Cosmos-Politas” | Galería G.M ARTE Ciudad Empresarial.

– “Primera Muestra Nacional de Collage” | M.A.M Chiloé.

– “F E” | Sala el Farol Valparaíso.

– “I-Cono Sur“ | Galería Praxis Santiago Chile.

– “Cuatro pintores Chilenos” | Galería PRAXIS Lima Perú.

– “Dulces Chilenos La Media Docena” Galería VALA Vanguardias Latinoamericanas.

– ”13 Puertas Pintadas” | Galería 13.

– ”Pinta tus Sky” | UBS AG Banca Suiza, La Parva Santiago Exposición y remate.

– “El Otro Paisaje” | Galería Stuart.

– “Dulces chilenos en Caldera“ | Estación Caldera III región.

– “Galería de Arte Moro de Maracaibo” exposición, Caracas Venezuela.

– “Shanghai art” feria de arte, Shanghai China.

– “KIAF”

International art Fair Korea.

– “La docena”

Colectivo de arte, Dulces Chilenos Centro Cultural JOFRE.

– “East and West, Painting and Sculpture” 1001 Art Gallery Shanghai China.

– “Art Miami”

Feria de Arte, Miami beach convention center, USA.

– “Latitud 23”

Trópico de Capricornio Junio del 2008 San Pedro de Atacama.

– “Memoria Fragmentada y Obras Recientes”

Galería 13.

– “Sur-Mercart” exposición de pequeños formatos en Galería trece.

– “Cartel se busca” Exposición de los carteles en el barrio Santa Isabel.

– “Rojas Azules y blancas” septiembre, Centro Cultural Agustín Rossn Pichilemu Chile.

– “Cabeza de Pintor” | Galería de arte QUQU, noviembre.

– “Expo colectiva” | Galería circulo azul Coayacan D.F Mexico.

– “Expo colectiva” | Galería Misrachi, Polanco, D.F, Mexico.

– “Expo colectiva” | Galeria Vértice, Guadalajara, Mexico.

– “Gol e Arte” | exposición en torno al Mundial de futbol, galería la Sala.

– “Rutas” con el colectivo de artistas visuales Km-0 | Centro Cívico de Las Condes.

– “PAU” | proyecto itinerante, (DIRAC) Paraguay, Argentina y Uruguay. Pintura, instalación y cocinería. (Como artista invitado).

– “Taller Compartido” | Noviembre, exposición de pintura y papel junto a Florencia Onetto, en espacio CIAN.

– “Avances de Polo-surdo” | muestra de collages y esculturas junto al destacado Artista Hugo Marín en sala CDA. (subterráneo del Café de las Artes).

– “Que las pinturas bailen como quieran” Exposición Individual, Galería Arte Isabel Aninat.

– “Bancas pintas” | exposición e intervención Pública. (Organizado por Galería La Sala y la Municipalidad de Vitacura).Centro Cultural JOFRE.

– “Preludio improvisatorio” | pinturas y collages, café del museo. Plaza mulato gil de Castro.

– “Menú del día” | colectivo Dulces Chilenos, Centro cultural Municipal de Ovalle y Museo del Limarí. (Proyecto realizado a través de ventanilla abierta).

– “La media player” | Colectivo de artes multi-formato, Galería 13. (Curador, productor y expositor).

– “Menú del Día” | gran formato, sala Abate Molina, Centro de Extensión de la Universidad de Talca, UTAL. (Productor, expositor y diseño de montaje).

– “Bazart-Uc” | Centro de Extensión Universidad Católica de Chile

“Generación del ’90” | Extensión Cultural UVM.

– “Art-Santigo” | feria de arte en G.A.M, Santiago Chile.

– Feria de arte Puerto Varas parque Kunstgarden Puerto Varas Chile.

– “Cartón futurama, ejercicios de reciclaje” | Galería Infrarrojo.

– “Art-Santigo” | feria de arte en G.A.M, Santiago Chile.

Exposición artistas del valle | Centro Cultural Lolol.

For me, art is connected to human beings through infinite threads that can be regarded as a link or parallel between our cognitive processes and spiritual convictions. That is, the connection of all realms.

Art is physics, poetry, spirituality, creative intention, contingency, eroticism, politics, humor, vibration, alchemy and good. It’s the possibility of playing and bringing proposals forward through visual and written metaphors. It’s about making choices and going down a path where pauses and contact points link ideas together. It’s about taking a look at yourself by making observations a critical practice. Letting the viewer associate or dissociate, making the act of reflection more playful and free, like Huidobro’s creations and Parra’s anti-poetry. It’s the reflection of a society and its freedom of expression.

For my part, there is also an interest in connecting the subject of alien life to the most authentic part of ancient cultures and to suggest them between the lines, playing with comic book visuals to provide this overly-used connection with a certain levity.

Today, I’m interested in using weave-like visuals that resemble embroidery or tattoos in terms of color and the shallow depths of a hidden and simple landscape.

Paco León’s painting is a journey of encounters and re-encounters, a hazardous quest to find clues of his own story in the atlas of the chromatic dimensions of his art. Maps of unfinished scales, labyrinths and broken mirrors. Amidst the pressing need for answers, art comes as a therapeutic device. There, matriarchal and technical washes create transparencies on the surface of canvases, sea atmospheres or fogs merging the tides of the Atlantic and Pacific.

Paco León’s art is always evocative, it asks questions more than it seeks to answer them, a poetic exercise of self-awareness. The arrows that are usually featured in his pieces point to directions but not destinations, they speak about a constantly alert visual search where the questioning process is the answer itself.

His art is about a journey that erects bridges to connect the outer and inner landscape. Hence the “heads”, which are installed like a geographical feature and inhabited by complex cartographies. In Paco León’s case, the head is also the main stage for his fantasy and dream-like world: the symbolic merger of the outer and inner world as a metaphor to Ithaca, the place to which all travelers always return.

This artist urges a visual reflection that ventures into the foggy furrows of a long-lost story. Paco León knows that the artistic whole is always more than the sum of its parts, and, ironically, sometimes by subtracting elements, the whole is enhanced. Therefore, in his pictorial practice, Paco is constantly discriminating, removing, discarding or disposing of elements in a battle limited by the four edges of his canvases.

From this obsessive endeavor to remove everything expendable, his artwork emerges from an individual memory that sinks its roots in the faraway dimensions of the self, beyond the merely biographic or dream-like. The result is expressed in a boundless imaginary made up from the scraps of an unknown and elusive ensemble that is manifested in the atmospheres, in an abstract haze that connects visceral elements that would otherwise seem arbitrary.

His most recent work, where he has explored new techniques such as digital printmaking or collage, evinces his interest in incorporating weave-like visuals to resemble embroidery or tattoos that are somehow transformed into a veil covering the simple landscape. Everything is atmosphere, evocation and alien or guardian-like presences.

In the construction of his imaginary archeology, Paco León doesn’t shy away from architectural resources that come from comic books or design. He uses these devices to evoke, but not disclose, his current interest regarding the limits of life in the Universe.

The seemingly delirious weaves of a disjointed appearance in his latest artwork acquire meaning in their atmosphere and mystery, that subtle construction made up of questions.

Looking and thinking

Looking at Paco León’s work makes us want to become painters. His images are captured in the canvas like a kaleidoscope of butterflies fluttering on a field. His passion for painting is evident in the application of materials onto the canvas and the possibility of forever capturing the shapes that stem from his imagination spontaneously, or from recurrent ideas. As an artist, he doesn’t let these images fade as it happens in the fragile world of dreams.

This becomes evident in the photograph of his statement: he’s standing, guarding a pieces from above, which matches the color of his clothing. In the piece, Cartón Futurama, one side showcases a painting on a 1.80m high refrigerator box, and on the other, he confidently poses with the thing that gives his life meaning: a brush.

This spontaneity from the shapes and the colors is not replicated in the titles he chooses. They lay out a subject, they’re intellectual titles. They urge the viewer to enjoy the experience through memory and intelligence. Nietzsche wrote: “We have art in order not to die from the truth.” Paco entitled a 2015 piece: En lo profundo y la luz.

The allusion in his statement to poetry and metaphor as nourishment for viewers was a warning cry. For Paco, there is no way of life without art, poetry or music. There’s no living without sensitivity!

Elie Wiesel said: “God created man because He loves stories.” Paco’s canvases have the ability to hold magical images created from the darkness of his inner cavern. The idea is creating metaphoric meaning that will become universal over time. Like a shaman in a dark cave, Paco prepares to hunt, and that is how he painted Trinos cromáticos de aves y búho, a piece from 2017. The bright colors of the painting take over his flying spirit. If we could date Paco’s sensitive walls using Carbon-14, it would pinpoint an immemorial relevance where paintings transcend time and space.

Memory and their fragility are found in the simultaneous images. Canvases today, like walls in Neolithic caves, contain the images that will endure time. They are an eternal, subtle and charming vessel for images. The viewer is thankful to discover a sensitivity that’s manifested in the intuition of the shapeless and unutterable. When examined, the shapes acquire meaning, when thought of, the right words to describe their contemporaneity emerge.

Paco León’s painting is a confession of experiences or dreams. They propose an exploration of a time and space that celebrates creation as a mirror of his individuality. The people who see the pieces will never forget if they have a painter’s head (¿Cabeza un pintor?) or question if there’s a fawn or rabbit (¿Cervato o Conejo?). The passion oozing from them is irreplaceable. León focuses on the viewers and he doesn’t let go until the last transparency is unveiled.

Find Art.

We need our Arts to teach us how to breathe. Seize brush. Take stance. Do fancy footwork. Dance. Try poem. Write play. Milton does more drunk than God can.

Ray Bradbury

Paco is a wizard with color. He can light up a painting like Amarillo Nórdico so the golden, red and green hues are so bright they burn. Or like in La sombra en el espejo where cold tones merge in an austral night. The different layers he applies on the support, much like in life, hide reality. Mirroring the piece, this situation is replicated in day-to-day life, chatting with friends and going back to family driven by art and love.

Julio Sapollnik

Transfiguration is the distinguishing feature of Paco León’s thematic development. From rock to flesh, from water to metallic vectors, from air to complex dragonflies and from fire to the freeing blank emptiness.

Rodrigo Silva Donoso.

Mysterious yellow, I have uncovered all your secrets. I know a lot about you, but how about you? Do you know anything about me? You came from a piece of wheat or the sun, I’m not actually sure. Still, I recognize you and I think about you at dawn when I gaze out to the fields or see a lemon rind.

Samy Benmayor

Collage, painting, screen prints, stencils, etc.

Painting with scissors and brush, binders, hardware and the painter’s vision. The mystery of the materials used and the power of the piece’s concept, before the image and its poetic value, the cut and the reaction, the alchemical value of recycling, and curling up and sitting on the set table like a free fall.

The objective randomness of surrealists, the riddle in finding foreign objects. Doing your own thing.

PL.

Cartón futurama

This is a stage installation, conceived in the spirit of recycling, a collage that is made up of several pieces, all created on appliance boxes like refrigerators, plasma TVs, washing machines, etc.

The visuals and interpretation of the piece Cartón Futurama speaks about a range of languages and shapes in terms of explicit techniques and themes.

The themes are related to fiction and comic books, along with the complex textures and worlds hidden behind veils, brush strokes and cut upon cut... This piece is part of a bigger project, “the cardboard route”.

PL.

“Let paintings dance however they what”

A piece is a whole universe, created and established. Celebrating its independence, the piece dances to the beat of its own drum and chromatics trills. The dominant language of these domains is certainly an honest expression of pure painting and its other means.

PL.

“Better Untitled”

For many reasons still untitled, what does it truly matter how the object is named. Maybe simply existing is reason enough to just do it and let be.

A creature with an object-like nature. A thing with no limbs. No feet, no head, no use. The object of the desire of being an object. Just a piece of art. PL.

Biography

Francisco (Paco) León was born in Santiago de Chile in 1972. A year later, his family moved to Stockholm, Sweden. After spending 5 years there, he returned to his native country, but he continued visiting the European country frequently until 2005 when his father moved back to Chile.

At age 18, Paco traveled to the United States and studied Science of Creative Intelligence (CIC) at Maharishi University. There, he started painting in the free time his job and studies allowed him.

Upon his return, he decided to devote himself to painting and studied an additional year at the Arcis University. He then embarked in a self-taught endeavor, nurtured by his experiences and an interest in learning through visiting workshops such as La Brocha, a meeting and creation place of the 80s and 90s.

As the godson of artist Hugo Marín, he inherited transcendental meditation as a crucial tool for his development. He actively participated in the artist’s studio, where he gained and applied his knowledge.

He lived in Valparaíso, where he pursued painting, and in 1996 he moved back to Santiago to hold his first exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC), a milestone that kick-started his professional artistic career.

To cultivate himself, Paco has participated in several collective workshops such as La Brocha, Generador, Taller Tuna and Taller Italia, where he’s spent time with celebrated national artists. He has also organized local visual arts events as an artist who’s “swimming against the tide”, as he coined himself.

Paco finds his pictorial language in landscapes and abstraction, futuristic and tribal elements. The journal El Mercurio once described him as “a futuristic ethnic painter.”

Painting is his favorite technique but he has also tried his hand at printmaking, photography, collage, sculpture, drawing and editorial work through his collage and poetry project “Polo sur-do.”

His work has been exhibited in several samples in both Chile and abroad, in countries like China, Korea, USA, Venezuela, Paraguay, Uruguay and Peru. Moreover, his pieces are part of several private, corporate and public collections incluiding Chiloé’s Museum of Modern Art (MAM), the University of Talca (UTAL), Compañía Cervecerías Unidas (CCU), UBS Switzerland AG, Almagro Constructora, Polincay, South Cone Investment Advisor (CDC IXIS), and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

Fotógrafos / Photographers

Irma Bernhard

Bernardo Carvajal

Paco León

Agradecimientos

Hugo Marín

Ana María Matthei

Ciro Beltran

Rodrigo Silva

Guillermo Carrasco

Samy Benmayor

Rodrigo Cociña

Bernardo Carvajal

Irma Bernhard

María Ema Hernandez

Sole Caro

Directores / Directors

Ana María Matthei

Ricardo Duch

Edición y Corrección de textos /

Editor and Text Correction

Elisa Massardo

Dirección de Arte / Art Director

Paco León

Catalina Papic

Diseño / Design

Paco León

Norelkis Arroyo

Traducción / Translate

Adriana Cruz

Este libro se terminó de imprimir en diciembre de 2019

Todos los derechos reservados

Paco León © 2019

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