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| .Dr
Lakra |
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Art has always
questioned the medium through which it is portrayed.
Extending ultimately, to questions over its very
definition. Paint on canvass may be described
as ‘pure art’, while a chair, designed
principally as function, can include artistic
elements. A cup, ostensibly a container, may be
considered art if intended solely as an ornament,
while a painting may be deemed craft if mass-produced.
But where does skin fit? The organ that encompasses
our physicality, yet divides our externality.
Race, creed, colour, the building blocks of the
‘other’ and the familiar, are all
superimposed upon the body’s outer shell.
Can this value-laden entity become ‘pure
art’, or is it confined by its attachment
to the identities of those who wear it?
This meta-physical minefield is precisely the
framework Mexican based artist Dr Lakra works
within. “Tattoo’s have more of a purpose
over ‘pure’ art. Tattoos aren’t
like getting a normal piece of art. They become
part of your identity. You can’t just sell
it on like you can a canvass,” says Dr Lakra.
Born Jeronimo Lopez Ramirez, Lakra adorns the
flesh of people and objects to embody primitive
desires and emotions. From the hyper real, to
death and constructions of femininity, the images
are a beautification of the diabolical.
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Starting
out as a tattoo artist in Mexico City, Ramirez crudely
constructed a homemade tattoo machine and began
practising on himself and those around him. “When
I first started doing tattooing I used to carry
around a black briefcase like the one’s doctors
used. And I was wearing gloves, with all these jars
of ink and alcohol, so people just started calling
me doctor.” Lakra however, is a Spanish colloquialism
meaning scum, or joker. It is also a play on ‘lacra’,
which refers to a blemish, scar, or laceration resulting
from a wound, as well as to a socially disgraceful
group or individual. These combined meanings lend
itself to the subject matter of Lakra’s work.
Childhood dolls decorated with spiders’ webs,
odes to former sweethearts and ornate depictions
of the Virgin Mary bastardise sacred with the mass-produced,
the innocent with the sinful and the feminine with
the masculine.
After opening a tattoo parlour with friends in 1993,
Lakra simultaneously began embellishing the fictional
flesh of fetishized characters found in vintage
magazines. Mid 20th century superheroes, old toy
figurines, and non-figurative objects all fell under
Lakra’s gaze.
“The tattoo’s have a purpose. They have
to fit the body, and abide by certain rules. You
have limits. The skin is alive and it will change
and you have to think about this in order to do
a proper tattoo. But when I draw I don’t have
to think about those factors. Sometimes people ask
me to do drawings as tattoos, but it’s totally
different.”
Lakra’s compositions enslave Mexican, French,
and North American imagery, infusing them with the
suggestion that by simply altering appearances,
alters the relationships cast upon them. A pair
of muscular wrestlers in traditional Mexican décor
becomes emasculated to superhero status while remaining
charged with homoeroticism. A negligee-clad young
girl reclining suggestively on a bed becomes a clown-faced
suicide victim attended by the angel of death. “I
see my work, my tattoo work and other formats, as
a mixture of different iconography’s from
different cultures and places. I’m always
trying to deal with this basic primal urge. Primitive
instincts like sex, violence, graffiti, are all
innate into human beings and not tied to one culture.”
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This anthropological morphism has allowed Lakra’s
work to playfully flit between artistic genres,
and the mediums through which it’s portrayed.
From idealised American pinups, voodoo mysticism
and national obsessions with death. To human skin,
posters, dolls, skulls, and old newspapers. Communicative
mediums become ripe for subversion and disfigurement.
Despite recent appearances at such big-name venues
as the Saatchi Gallery, Tate Modern, and Matthew
Marks Gallery, Dr. Lakra remains something of a
mystery. Only communicating through the art gallery
and collective, Kurimanzutto. He recently appeared
at Art Basel with Kurimanzutto, combining his tattoos
with his drawings in unison. The exhibition itself
asked questions as to whether art could be transferred
mechanically onto any format or medium. Something
Lakra feels very strongly about. “Some people
see my work as graffiti, which is fine. I don’t
consider graffiti a negative thing. I put my own
interpretation on design, just so it’s not
just a mechanical process of reproducing art onto
skin.”
The questions Lakra poses are laden with an irony
and humour that sadly, is either construed as low-brow
commercialism, or half-baked originality. But Lakra
has taken issues of art and its communication with
the world, and made it accessible and enjoyable
to an increasingly cynical populace. Something others
should take note of.
Dr Lakra’s next exhibition, Escultura social:
A New Generation of Art from Mexico City, will be
at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago from
June 23 – September 2.
Words by Matt Hussey |
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VISIT: http://www.kurimanzutto.com |
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