Hot Days – De Crohn Amsterdammer

In La Tourista, A canteen somewhere in a tropical climate, at one time everything was quiet. The fried eggs were served on glazed plates and the walls were covered with tiles in colored mosaic. At least that’s the tradition, as told by the artist Sol Galero during an art exhibition in The Hague in 1646. Now the one who enters there enters a room with the remnants of that fantasy restaurant. The mosaics of the walls rest flat on the ground or on some stones, as if on an archeological site. With new colors and decorative patterns, the tiles are reminiscent of hot days, swimming pools and outdoor kitchens, and as you climb the porch built as a part of the canteen you will recognize a plant and window in the patterns. . Tile panels once provided a view outside the restaurant’s guests, now turning only a plastic ivy onto the porch’s bars.

There were no guests other than me, no trace of service, but La Tourista’s situation was real and I never thought I would be in such a canteen. Space breathes Latin America: ocher paint on curved walls, delightful paintings of palm trees and glowing, rounded suns. There are many porcelain figurines on the brightly colored shelves, a grocery store somewhere between the dilapidated furniture, which is now out, and tourist kick-knocks. A (polished) plate with hamburger buns, beans and actually fried eggs, but you can also find a gray plate in the shape of the mouth with black lips sticking out of both the tongue and the cigarette butt.

Only a plastic ivy blows on the wires of the porch

Soul Colero was born in Caracas, Venezuela, came to the family at a young age in the Netherlands and went to work as an artist in Berlin. His art was initially aroused by anger, he once said of the “colorful” view of Latin America he encountered in Europe, while he grew more and more from his own country. He rides in a uniform style in his ‘over-the-top installations’ that give a different interpretation to complete spaces like the canteen, the hair salon, the money transfer office and the square. To a certain extent. In 2019, Tate founded a bus in Liverpool that had seats with colored lines and happy dots, the dream of every backpacker to travel to the continent, but a necessary means of transportation for hard-working people. People may or may not like the bus, but Calero said the most important thing to her was that she was there as a woman from Latin America.

That anger is not much seen in Galero’s final work. Both her paintings and her installations have tropical meanings, ripe fruits and blooming flowers, with numerous decorative elements that take on their own life in her work. In the remodeling bureau, the chairs are seated in a delightful mix of bananas and watermelons, like the packaging of a fruit drink, something sold here too, a feeling, a longing for a new place. In his loose painting style, on paper and on the wall, with decorations representing folk tales and craftsmanship, Callero plays with expectations, but they are ultimately unfulfilled. Hides the world of colonial pessimism behind happiness. If you look closely, you will see that the colorful architecture is on one facade and the colors are intertwined. Galero’s Latin America is a card continent. In the interval between nostalgia, desire and reality she immerses herself in her work. The nostalgia of the immigrant, the nostalgia of the tourists who rethink their country and look forward to a journey, is the daily reality of the people who live there.

The large installations he has placed in public places in Europe and Latin America indicate the absurdity of our preconceived notions, but Galero’s work is also in the hack. Los Vestigios de la Tourista A preview of an exhibition in Bergen, Norway later this year, he came up with the idea for the canteen for the show. But in 1646, Colero’s restaurant with mosaics and pottery in the window became part of the street scene, evoking the fantasy: there is a money transfer office beyond a few doors, whose services a North African man looking at the sand dunes. , Across the street is a Persian restaurant with plates full of food and pictures of over-flavored coffee. Like Calero’s Latin America, they are dream destinations that are not really achievable.