
JK
My first stop on my tour of the month-long Seattle Deconstructed Art Fair was one of Koplin del Rio's latest shows, Neopaganismo - Back to the Forests by artists (and brothers) Einar and Jamex de la Torre. It is spectacular. Creepy. Hilarious. Gaudy. Sublime. It playfully juxtaposes the low and high, the cheap and expensive, the secular and holy. And it's the perfect show to see in person after the long months spent inside during the pandemic.

Like many other works in the show, "Feminencia" is a lenticular print which appears to change as you walk past it. This movement is a result of lenticular printing, a process where two or three digital image files are printed onto a special plastic lens, woven together, and, in this case, back-lit with an LED light. So when a viewer approaches the painting, the medium gives the illusion of movement and depth in the image, a sort of illusion that the brothers have cranked up to the nth degree with their surreal and baroque imagery.
One of the images in the piece is of a statue of White Tara , a figure in Buddhism, given to Mexico by the Nepali government and located in Ensenada, where the brothers reside. Using Photoshop, they layered bits of Austrian churches and the Eiffel Tower to create this hyper-charged portrait of the goddess.

Woven into this image is another featuring King Leopold I of Belgium surrounded by classical representations of "the feminine," with the sex turned up a little bit. Women's faces appear on his genitals, his knees, his shoulders. The famous women from the 16th-century painting "Gabrielle d'Estrées et une de ses soeurs" appear at his feet with their hair frizzed out. And—because of the illusory nature of the lens—these details easily elude, drawing you into this interesting exploration of monarchy and divine power.
Also of note is the frame surrounding "Feminencia," cut from aluminum and covered in glass and cast resin. The intricate designs carved into the frame are inspired by papel picado, a type of Mexican folk art involving finely cut decorations on paper. There are plastic eyeballs—mirroring the eyes of the figures in the piece—as well as cheap trinkets suspended in the cast resin, shaped into ornate details that buttress the surreal image it contains.
Einar and Jamex de la Torre's Neopaganismo - Back to the Forests is a feast for the eyes—don't miss it.

