Artospective: Portraits Ecuador by Christian Mera.

Bonil

An Interview with Christian Mera.

Who and where are you from?

People call me Christian Mera. I am 37 years old and I pursuit find my essence between painting and the gaze of whom I paint. I graduated from Bachelor of Fine Arts and obtained the specialization in pintura-grabado in 2009.

I was born in Quito - Ecuador, but I also inherited chilean nationality from my grand mother. Since the moment I got the double nationality and stared moving around the world, I decided to don´t be attache to a flag or a “patriotic” spirit. I decided being a world citizen.

How you got into this?

It started up little by little. Every decision and circumstances have irredeemably built me as a painter. Right now I live from and for them. I feel my studio is my place in the world, and everything I do outside of it is, on different leves, a waist of time. The moments I regret and doubt about what I should do or who I am are far behind.

What is your driving force?

There is a repetitive anecdote of unsuccessful searches for the Abstract in my personal story. I don`t think it is a whim, it´s the conviction that the color and the shape should be expressed alone, without figures, positions or any approach that comes out of the field of vibration that should cause the chromatic frequencies or tensions in the way on a 2D surface (explicitly talking about the pictorial).

For my painting should be enjoyed as is a Symphony: without lyric or plot, only perceiving the frequencies and having a pure sensory experience.

I have yet to find my own way of abstracting. My work is suspended in an attempt to, in a pursuit. I start painting my free signatures on paper, leaving me lead by the "non-form" and suddenly faces start to appear; but I respect them and give them space in my compositions. The primary impulse and intuition are key parts for me. I've decided to move softly in this hybrid space.

What kind of work you do and why?

I do signatures.

The signature, the stamp of each individual.

The "Signature" serie was born when I realized that my eternal hunt to get this Abstract was more simple than I thought. First; I should stop fighting and always paddling against the current. Second; I noticed that one of the most common acts of nowadays western people, signing a document, hide the transcendental key to forever change my line.

Sign is an intentional impulse to move the hand and be entirely authentic. Therefore; I have held for some years the thesis that anyone could paint a picture that is "authentic". Speaking purely in terms of individual expression, regardless of the topic or much less “contemporaneity”.

In the serie "signatures" experiment with expanding this tiny moment of signing our personal doodle in a document; extending it in time and space to the whole painting.