Nautilidae Interpretaciòn 2025 70mm. tècnica de ensamblaje soldada
Unikat 70mm Lutz Podolski
Caracas-Berlin
In the mid-1980s, after long years of wandering through South America, I settled in Venezuela, and was absorbed quite quickly by the art scene there. Caracas was
then a thriving melting pot of cultures with unimagined expressive possibilities for artists. Attracted by Venezuela's scenic beauty, unspoiled nature and ideal local conditions, artists came
from all over the world. It was the time of international festivals. Culture was writ large and anything was possible.
In opulent Caracas in 1989, the first bloody uprisings took place and I presented myself for the first time with a solo exhibition in the elegant gallery VIA. The
ladies and gentlemen who arrived there in their black limousines thought they still had everything under control, which was to turn out to be a fatal error in just ten years.
While my artist colleagues felt more and more drawn to New York or Miami, I was in the mood for the unexplored regions south of the Orinoco or the snow-covered
Andes. So I led a life far from Caracas with sporadic performances and exhibitions about my latest discoveries and indigenous acquaintances. I was intensively engaged in ethnology, anthropology,
history and shamanism, to which the works of these years bear witness.
At the turn of the millennium, the "Comandante" seized power and systematically poisoned the political climate until the general strike in 2002, which ended with the
massive exodus of 300,000 Venezuelans. I also retreated to the island of Barbados, where I worked on an ethnohistorical art project.
Later in the Venezuelan Andes in Mérida, I developed a series of objects and sculptures made from scrap cars and other recycled materials. Through an exhibition, I
came into contact with one of the directors of national Petroleum Chemistry, who asked me to develop an artistic social project. With some fellow artists we then set up a foundation and worked
for the next two years on a social sculpture a la Beuys in the tropical slums of Venezuela. Quite successful, undogmatic,
anti-authoritarian, too beautiful to be, too critical, they decided to wipe us out censor us, and without funds we finally retreat to the
Andes...
My design jobs in that years for hotels and clubs are, so to speak, consequence of the expulsion of artists from the public into the private space. But even this is
subject to permanent threat.
Art is communication and when this is no longer possible, art is dead. The decision to leave Venezuela was not easy for me. Since I live and work from ideas and
exchange with others, I felt that a radical break was necessary and I had to leave.
In Berlin the international scene inspired me, so that i spent nearly two years in this oversaturated city Then i went back to south America in 2019 but it was even
whorse repressive.
Interpretation of the shamanic worlds from the 90th
Fotos Rafael Lacau