(b. Santiago, Chile, 1959; lives and works in Santiago).
The work of Arturo Duclos is informed by conceptual and theoretical concerns that engage the interaction of language and historical narratives. An active participant in the contemporary art scene in Chile, Duclos has privileged the activity of painting, exploring its possibilities and visuality.
Duclos’s interest in the baroque, particularly its emphasis on the emblem, relies on signs, symbols, and languages that correspond to diverse art histories, cultures, and failed utopias. For instance, the fragments, superimposed images, and textures of Take My Trip (1995) create an overall effect of surfaces and layers where the viewer is invited to consider a universe of shifting meanings. Duclos also deals with ornamentation by casting baroque themes into a contemporary web of meanings. Paintings such as Vanitas (1996) and Sulfur (1999) draw from an ongoing archive of cosmological maps, I Ching tablets, post
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