Jaime Gili
b. 1972, Venezuela
Gili belongs to a generation of Venezuelan artists who necessarily continue to examine the place of their practice within their inheritance of one of the most interesting Modernist movements in Latin America. In the 1950s, architects like Carlos Raúl Villanueva encouraged Venezuelan artists to redefine public space by integrating modern architecture and visual arts. The following generations of artists grew in the midst of this coalescence. But they also inherited a country whose national economy was based on a volatile oil industry and, more recently, experienced the political meltdown of the democratic system, ending in the current political conflict.
Gili has developed a unique style that represents a highly distinctive point of convergence between a specific inherited European modernism interlaced with Venezuela's past historical modernism, and the current affairs. Aware that abstract painting cannot place current reality as such on to the canvas - for instance, the reality of protests and the disintegration of democracy - Gili takes on these issues through their tempo and the painting's own slow process of becoming. Thus, gradually and looking within its own limitations, Gili's abstract paintings attempt to bridge the voids of time and space, the final message being one of a positive future.