Los Tipitos by Alejandro Contreras Moiraghi

Alejandro Contreras Moiraghi’s artistic production is torn between being figurative and non-figurative; between painting and drawing on the one hand, and photography on the other; between the object and the two-dimensional surface; between installation and action. In this dispute between dichotomies there is no preponderance of any component, since the opposing entities may become one or the other.

His characters, the tipitos (the little dudes), are peculiar creatures who adopt the same attitude as their author: they either settle inside the picture or outside the frame, they stay in the spotlight or hang from the canvass; in other words, they alternate between both realities, or remain in the frame. The tipitos tell their stories within everyday settings: in a toilet or a sneaker; in a car or around food or a telephone past-due bill; boiling in a kettle or trying to flee from a shabby denim pocket. It makes no difference for them to be dressed in colors or stay as black and white beings. They laugh and cry: their faces show drama and comedy, but their distinctive tone is cynicism.

The artist makes them go on pilgrimage. He gives them movement, as if they were performing curious rituals in which they seem to parade and dance.

Contreras Moiraghi is also torn between other “in-betweens.” While his paintings have a strong neoexpressionist descent, the influence of comics and the conception of some of his works as virtual vignettes cannot be denied. When he works with objects or installations, however, he approaches a neo conceptual proposition.

The tipitos are countless, but they are one at the same time; the individual can be perceived as a mob, and vice versa.

Contreras Moiraghi organizes the space and pre-produces his objects. He mounts staging and builds. And above all, he incorporates fiction to reality and the latter to the former. From this perspective, there are works that can be understood as deconstructive practices: when he inverts and slides his figures close to real objects, reality and fiction are not on the same level, although they do not oppose. They undergo a dislocation process.

Dislocation can also be interpreted as being “in-between” in that it implies moving from one place to another without staying definitely in any.
Jorge Figueroa