In La escena: infierno grande, the Chilean researcher José de Nordenflycht documents the work of the avant-garde writer and visual artist Juan Luis Martínez (1942–1993) within the context of the exhibition Chile 100 años artes visuales. 1973–2000: transferencia y densidad, the third iteration of Chile 100 años, presented at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Santiago to celebrate of the start of the millennium. The exhibition included works by 33 artists who were thought to be “articulating” that backdrop to the dawn of the twenty-first century.
The author notes the social outreach of some Santiago artists, despite their having been silenced in the capital city during the 1970s and 1980s. Nordenflycht mentions Martínez’s decision to cross out his name on the cover of his book La nueva novela (1977), an extremely provocative step considering the Western tradition that has always prized “the signature” as validation of a work of art.
La escena: infierno grande is complemented by two key works by the poet Juan Luis Martínez (1942–1993): La nueva novela and La poesía chilena. Martínez works on the borderline between visual art and poetry, which prompts Nordenflycht to cite “frictions” with previous publications such as the journal Manuscritos. He also mentions the possible effects of circa 1970 exhibitions of works by the Uruguayan artist Luis Camnitzer (b. 1937) and the North American Gordon Matta Clark (1943–1978).
[See the following articles in the ICAA digital archive about the author’s work: “3 arlequines del DNA” (754596) by Gonzalo Millán; “Días y Logos con Hugo Rivera” (773789) by José de Nordenflycht Concha; and “La redefinición del contrato simbólico entre escritor y lector: La Nueva Novela de Juan Luis Martínez” (751667) by Eugenia Brito. See also the work mentioned above, La poesía chilena, by Martínez (751600)].
