Lisa Sette to Showcase Electrifying Paintings of Claudio Dicochea

This summer’s solo exhibit of the electrifying, philosophically charged paintings of Claudio Dicochea: Forbidden Futures exemplifies the Lisa Sette Gallery’s commitment to challenging, compelling and culturally pertinent artwork.

As a child in the border town of San Luis Río Colorado in Sonora, Mexico, Claudio Dicochea was fascinated by the comic books on sale at the local grocery, bound within a pulpy color cover and containing a “wonderful, crinkly sepia” collection of interior pages. A profound sensual appreciation for the imagery and philosophical appeal of popular culture is tangible in Dicochea’s work today – rollicking acrylic paintings that are influenced, and sometimes inspired, by science fiction, comic books, horror films and popular music.

While Dicochea’s compelling works draw viewers into a riot of recognizable images from the top-grossing, top-40 hits of the recent past, these paintings are compositionally structured upon the disturbing history of Colonial appropriation. In many of Dicochea’s works, the painter joins together hybrid families of various “casts,” existing in a protean sea of class signifiers and pop imagery. “Each painting takes an original casta as a template to be distorted, in which original characters are replaced by archetypes from popular media, comics and world history … these works lift and sample from original paintings in order to understand the processes and effects of reappropriation. In this manner, we can better understand how such re-appropriation functions as both language and method.”

Claudio Dicochea
de la Jacqueline y el Cesar, la Gloria (of Jacqueline and Cesar, G-L-O-R-I-A)
acrylic, graphite, charcoal, transfer, wood 48″ x 36″ x 1.75” 
IMAGE COURTESY LISA SETTE GALLERY, PHOENIX

Of particular influence in Dicochea’s recent works is the realm of science fiction, as it intersects with the scientific-sounding fictions which have been used in the past to explain or justify social constructs. “I’ve always found looking at culture through the lens of sci-fi really alluring. Social constructs having to do with inherited status are often loosely based on scientific research or so-called scientific logic, but at the same time they’re just utilizing whatever knowledge might have been arrived at in order to create or implicate a social fiction … the idea of “race” is kind of a blatant example of scientific fiction, or a narrative unfolded based on loose scientific facts, but really meant to legitimize exploitation. That’s the big connector, the big social fiction.”

Claudio Dicochea
de la Norteña y el Primer Ministro, la Mutacíon (of Northerner and Prime Minister, the Mutation)
acrylic, graphite, charcoal, transfer, wood 48″ x 36”  
IMAGE COURTESY LISA SETTE GALLERY, PHOENIX

While critical and philosophical underpinnings are integral to Dicochea’s work, these days the painter is concerned with the forward-thinking aspects of his project: “Everyone is born somewhere. I’m not so interested in the idea of a shared origin, I’m interested in the idea of a shared destination. It’s a concern of mine to invert the cone of media influence and not so much point it toward the past but point it openly toward the unwritten future.  When we’re talking about sci-fi, when we’re talking about the future, we’re talking about our destination.”

Claudio Dicochea: Forbidden Futures

July 5 – Sept. 3, 2016
Lisa Sette Gallery

Opening Reception: Sat., July 9, 2016 – 7 – 9 p.m.