Blink of an eye is a work in progress, and in a certain way a very personal experiment.
After seeing ìThe White Ribbonì, a movie written and directed by Michael Haneke, one scene came back to my mind several times. I started drawing that scene by memory, closing my eyes and trying to see the imprint that it left in my mind. I drew and painted it several times, searching deep not only in the visual memory but looking for clues on what was that scene telling me.
In the scene there is a young man that found his father dead, hanged, in the barn of their house. He opens the door, sees his father, and without enter to the room, walks away slowly heading to the house. He stops to see his sisters playing and laughing and enters to the house. He is in the kitchen while his mother is cooking, silent. First he stays by the door. Then he sits at the foot of some stairs and stays there; still, without talking. His mother doesnít notice him. This moment lingers for a long, long time. What is this character really doing? Perhaps he was trying to keep the world, as he and the rest of his family knew it until that moment, alive a little longer?
I see the internalized tension as powerful as something that will break their world forever.
Rafael Landea received his MFA from La Plata University, Buenos Aires, Argentina. He is a 2011 recipient of a San Francisco Arts Commission Grant for Individual Artists and he was featured in the 2012 “Our Radar”, Creative Capital database of art projects.
His works are included in the public collections at MaM (Museum of Art and Memory), and MPB (Fine Arts Museum Buenos Aires) Argentina.
His most recent solo exhibitions were “1930” Buenos Aires Holocaust Museum, “Maps of Silence”, a multimedia installation at the Exploratorium Museum of Art Science and Human Perception in San Francisco, and “Malvinas” Museum Malvinas (ESMA) Buenos Aires.
Other solo exhibition venues include Grace Cathedral 1055 Gallery, San Francisco, CA, and, Archimboldo Gallery, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Group exhibition highlights include “Performance” at Gensler San Francisco, “Madres de Plaza de Mayo” CC Haroldo Conti, Buenos Aires.
Landea has worked as a set designer and painter for theater in Argentina for more than 15 years. He has also been actively involved in designing and producing murals nationally and internationally; the latest in San Francisco, funded by Artery Project, and collaborations in Turin and Genoa, Italy.
In 2019 created two large murals, Architecture University and the Law Library both in La Plata, Argentina.
He has created illustrations for magazines and books for important Argentinean publishers as Anfibia, Malisia, EME, Ediciones B, and Universities, the latest in 2021: “Malvinas mi Casa” a book based on a diary written in 1829 in Malvinas/Falklands.
Landea was selected for the 2020 Prequalified Artist Pool by San Francisco Arts Commission.