Emvergeoning

I’ve decided to do a series of three posts on Alberto Mijangos‘ work over the next week or so. This, the first, includes images of paintings from his “Chones” series. (For the gringos in the audience, that means “undies”.)

This series of paintings was a primary focus for Mijangos at the end of his life. Painting abstract underwear was a way for Mijangos to deal with the demagoguery, hypocrisy, and self-righteousness that pervades our politics (by “our politics” I mean the politics of the human race). These parts of our clothing that are most hidden and most easily soiled by embarrassing breaches in self-control, represent the obscure, dark side of the human personality; but at the same time, they represent a beautiful vulnerability and honesty. Here’s Mijangos discussing the Chones paintings in his 2003 interview with Smithsonian:

Well, it’s a situation about honesty, a situation about — communication with honesty, talking directly to another human being and really looking at that human being as a spiritual being, and to deal on those terms of I am talking to you with all my honesty and I’m talking to your spiritual being which is beautiful and perfection, and in that communication there’s an incredible experience of really, really admiring what creation is all about.

Sometimes I remember talking to my son and my son will look at me like his father and I would look at my son like my son. Not long ago my son, who is 40 years old, I went to him and I told him, I don’t know you as a human being. I know you as my son, but I want to know you as a human being. And he says, “I want to know you as a human being, too.” And our relationship changed incredible. Now we know each other spiritually and it’s no longer that situation about seeing objects or seeing a table like a table or seeing a cat like a cat. It’s totally different. We have that opportunity and we lose that because of what’s going on in the world, so we cover ourselves. We don’t want anybody to see our Chones.

Mijangos’ style of heavily layered expressionism allows him to convey basic forms that are simple and bold, but also imbued with the scuffs and marks of a complex personality that has lived in the world and is being revealed with honesty. These layers suggest the levels of experience, feeling, and thought that comprise a personality, and are expressed through the image of the underwear: the layer beneath the layer, which is itself stained and frayed. Coming up next: the T-Shirt Series.

Habitat by Alberto Mijangos