Balance and Contrast

Plinio Avila creates oil based blurred paintings in tv-shaped easels which depict in diptychs the the manipulation of media by the government during the hectic times of the Mexican Olympic Games of 1968, and the mass killing of students in Tlatelolco only 12 days before.

 

Color TV was invented by Mexican entrepreneur Gonzalez Camarena who died 2 years before the Mexican Olympic Games in 1968. These games were the fist ever broadcasted worldwide in full color.

 

The government orchestrated an attack to the student protests based purely on paranoia. This attack was denied by many presidents thereafter. Only recently the files have been opened, pictures and videos have been released and information became available.

 

In this series of paintings Plinio brings together the images that everyone in the world could see, and and the images that government officials kept in secret. 

 

The blurred aspect of the painted image reflects on the blurring of memories, the aesthetic of frozen images of the moving film and techniques used at that time by artists such as Gerard Richter.