Historians tell that Fernando de Magallanes reached the Pacific Ocean in November 1520, after a 37-day voyage through the strait which bears his name today, and an ensuing grueling 15-month voyage marked by uncertainty and mutinies on board. He called it his “mare Pacificum”, with the intuition, perhaps ancestral, that calm always comes after the storm. And so it proved to be: the calm came, briefly, as a prelude to new hardships and the death of Magallanes himself in the Philippines, three and a half months later.
Magallanes’ voyage set the course for subsequent awe-striking odysseys. In the 19th century, a Frenchman of Peruvian descent named Paul Gauguin crossed the waters of the Pacific with the purpose of finding his lost paradise in Tahiti. In 1965, a Hollywood star, actor Marlon Brando, followed in Gauguin’s footsteps and established his very own Arcadia in French Polynesia: a realm where the complexities of life are reduced to concepts such as abundance, simplicity, happiness and communion with nature.
These ideas emerge in connection with Mar Sobre Mar, Moisés Barrios’ latest exhibition, which marks a return to the artist’s exploration of themes such as lost paradises, identity, landscape and the Pacific Ocean.
Moisés first encountered the sea at the age of 21. The impact of that moment led to his repeated return to the Pacific, and recalls, in its decisive nature, the remote afternoon when Aureliano Buendía’s father took him to see the ice. Twenty years later, a major new breakthrough occurred: Moises realized that the distance between Guatemala City and the Pacific Ocean was not measured in kilometers but in minutes, and that barely an hour and a half separated his home from the maritime landscape. Then came the recurring trips to the sea, the oil paintings and watercolors. It should be noted here that Moisés never learned to swim, which makes that immensity that we conventionally call “the Pacific” represent for him a mixture of panic and fascination.
The Pacific occupies a third of the Earth’s surface and stands as the largest ocean on the planet. Its waters lap the coasts of countries as distant and different as Guatemala, Cambodia, China, New Zealand, Colombia, Indonesia, Russia, Peru, Costa Rica, Vietnam, Mexico, Thailand and Canada. The Pacific is the Total Ocean: a body of water difficult to encompass in thought, containing more islands than the other oceans combined.
Encompass the Pacific in thought. That seems to be the key idea. Or rather, the purpose behind the methodical practice that Moisés Barrios has embraced for almost four decades. A practice that involves confronting the maritime landscape, living it, portraying it, leaving it behind, enforcing a pause and returning to the starting point. This tireless method has given rise to pictorial series such as Iztapa (1987), Pacífico guatemalteco (1995), Arcadia (1999), La ilustración del Pacífico (2007), Vías fluviales (2016) and, now, Mar Sobre Mar.
Moises Barrios: Mar Sobre Mar
Jun 6 – Aug 23, 2024
Galeria Extra
Guatemala City, Guatemala
