Guido Chouela

Cromosíntesis is a series that explores the representation of nature through photographic documentation and pictorial intervention, in successive layers of print and paint. It invites the viewer to contemplate a diversity that is at risk and in constant transformation. In choosing the subject—the nature of our land—and its chromatic representation, I seek to complicate the perception of a single color, green—or rather, greens—in order to emphasize the idea of biodiversity. On the one hand, this range stands for abundance and vitality; on the other, it reveals the fragility of our ecosystems and the urgency of preserving that diversity. This artistic practice occupies a space where the boundaries between photographic capture and gestural expression dissolve; it seeks a synthesis in which photography and painting cease to be separate languages and become a new material. The construction of these pieces is based on an archaeology of the gaze: a process of successive dermal layers in which the photographic print and the paint intervene in one another and merge into temporal and material strata. Each layer is a trace, a mark that is then reworked, veiled or accentuated by the substance of the paint. This dialogue between the lens and the gesture (the texture and color of the acrylic) on the canvas creates a complexity that attempts to approach that of the living world. In this representation, the landscape recorded by the camera dissolves into pictorial abstraction, only to return—transformed by the traces of color and material—as a new figuration. In this case, the starting point is a photograph taken in the Yungas of Jujuy, the mountain cloud forests of northwestern Argentina, and the choice of a mural format offers an immersive experience of their biodiversity.