La Balsa Arte features a selection of recent artworks by Luis Luna, where multiple interests of the artist are revealed, along with his curiosity for the world of thought and arts which makes him stand out as the owner of a particularly lively mind among his contemporaries. A physician in his early years, he later became a plastic artist; among his passions he lists hieroglyphics, travel as a condition of life, the hidden texts of the first centuries of Christianity, the work of Borges, Goya, Dürer, quantum physics, geometry, etc., etc., his interests are innumerable and continually intertwined. In his work, the sense of time and the hermetic prevail, since the symbolic matrix is ultimately the source of the mystical experience, which is lived as an awakening of consciousness.

'Braided' is a term referring to the tradition of historical reconstruction and iteration of texts in dissimilar documents from classical Greece. According to history, the recollection of parts of the classics merged with the various mystical writings of the early Christian sects, as well as with the pagan tradition of Hermes Trismegistus, who in the second and third centuries A.D. dictated a pagan mysticism derived from Egyptian hieroglyphics and Hermes, god of magic. In the 20th century this tradition had its effect on symbolism, experimental poetry and surrealism.

He absorbs this tradition by embarking on his work as a syncretism, always attentive to that which is not conspicuous. “Syncretism began to manifest itself, and never left me. From that moment the work in series was enriched and it would sometimes randomly intertwine and interweave images in different series in a casual way; like the Goyaesque manolas in the series 'Travelers of the New Granada'[1]; like the beings of Bosch, in representations of Dürer or the phrases of the 'Songbook of the Cathedral of Segovia' in different contexts” [2].

Reflecting on the paths that have led him to his current work, the artist says:
“In the midst of this process I devoted myself to collecting “icons”, which helped me to express my surroundings. Some I associated with experiences, impressions, etc.; others I collected from Turkish markets, graffiti in the street, medieval illustrations, alchemy treatises and different trips I made to leave the 'center'. I generally painted on board or on paper, with acrylic or pigment, varying the formats and strengthening the idea of the fragment; for each surface a figure. I painted things that meant something very specific and unmistakable, in the manner of an ideogram, and which I accompanied with a clarifying legend or a simple and concise narrative. In Egypt I was able to appreciate, in some villages of the upper Nile, very simple, almost childish drawings, illustrating loose phrases of encouragement to the traveler, who supposedly also goes on pilgrimage. This approach between image and phrase I would later find again in Goya and in the Mexican votive offerings, which served as inspiration for more works” [3].

Contrary to a pure aesthetic, Luna appreciates whatever allows him to contaminate ideas and media, using a method of ideological and physical collage. This vision of a “cracked utopia” serves to domesticate the landscape, maintaining a concept of an imposing and unique nature. Glass occupies a leading role in his work as an expression of baroque light and gnosticism. He considers liberating “to find so many connections between seemingly dissimilar elements such as the representations of Robert Fludd on the Genesis and the figure of a blessed santafereña drawn by Joseph Brown at the dawn of Gran Colombia”.

In the face of scientific speculation, he finds the need to open spaces and access other ways of reasoning. “The world below the Planck scale is a world that handles another logic, that needs new concepts of symmetry and that challenges our ability to integrate knowledge. It is something so wonderful that it empowers our life. It is something that art cannot overlook.”

Luis Luna opens the doors to another way of thinking and feeling art. The aesthetic structures that he carefully elaborates invite, by their materiality, form and concept, to the experience of art, direct and spontaneous. A certain opacity, akin to mysticism, announces that not everything has to be explicit, that a certain mystery is protected from the eyes of the observer.

Ana Patricia Gómez - Directora

[1]https://www.luisluna.co/portafolio_detalle.php?tema=Viajeros%20de%20la%20Nueva%20Granada&idioma=esp
[2] Artist’s text, 2024.
[3] Idem.