BLACK SUN
By Alberto Petrina

"Iglesias Brickles is -and will always be, without a
doubt- a feral artist of those that do not run away
galloping through the hills."
Rafael Squirru

The unparallel art of Eduardo Iglesias Brickles reaches peaks and depths available to very few, and that is why he can and must be placed together with the greatest contemporary Argentine creators. Extraordinary engraver, and no less extraordinary painter, his mastery of both disciplines reaches the highest expression in his xilopinturas1. It is in these illuminated woodcuts that the austerity of the drawing, the primary power of color, and the clean sharpness of the cut are synthesized in a new form, producing a powerful and succinct fusion.

But Iglesias Brickles greatly exceeds a virtuoso mastery of his craft. A lucid interpreter of our national gloom, he has captured -as very few people have- the obscurity that darkens too many corners of our history and our idiosyncrasy, deriving from multiple and inscrutable origins: the isolated geography, the racial hotchpotch, the feverish violence of antagonistic men and agendas. Sometimes, he seems to have lighted his creatures with the blinding flash of a press photographer or the spotlight of a torture chamber. It is not easy, however, to perceive them bathed by sunlight, unless one dares to imagine the beams of a black sun. As a worthy disciple of the great Aida Carballo, his works always exhibit a disturbing atmosphere in which the characters float exhausted, but alert, permanently threatened by the nightmares the artist has dreamt for them.

However, Eduardo Iglesias Brickles is far from being a prophet of despair. It is only that his testimony rejects the abusive overdose of indulgence we tend to administer ourselves. The rigor he imposes on himself as an author
is the same he demands of his subjects, of the stories he tells and the actors he summons to animate them. He has taken the risk of showing in his work what we really are, rather than what we wish or believe to be. Perhaps because the English blood of the Brickles has had more weight in the final definition of his character, he has been more inclined to the tough discipline of sarcasm than the sticky broth of Latin self-pity.

Although his vision does not lack references to inland myths -like, for example, the phantasmagoric evocation of the "Encuentro con San La Muerte" (Encounter with Saint Death)- the very essence of his art is inextricably linked to the dense atmosphere of the metropolis ("Un largo atardecer de marzo" [A Long Dusk in March], "Dias malditos" [Cursed Days], "El fisgon" [The Snooper], "Chacabuco"). His stark, almost schematic urban settings -which could incidentally refer to De Chirico- move away from the ecstatic metaphysics the Italian conferred to his own. On the contrary, they are magnetized by an overwhelming force. They are places suitable for wild and surreptitious actions, spaces swept away by urgency, boundaries that only just control the bursting of the storm ("Auto rojo" [Red Car]). As for its inhabitants, they illustrate both the feeble triumph of the heroes and the utter bad luck of the losers. It is a very thin line, and Iglesias Brickles's creatures -artists, criminals, whores, boxers, rock stars- cross it time and again with impassible indifference ("Historia de un boxeador" [Story of a Boxer], "Uppercut de zurda" [Left Uppercut], "Una rubia sordida" [A Sordid Blond], "La cantante pop" [The Pop Singer]).

As a matter of fact, our artist's line of inquiry focuses on the theme of fate -that cosmic oracle that disposes of men without taking into account their vices and virtues. Given the unfathomable difficulty of tackling it, fate is a subject that art seldom turns to, but which can nonetheless, dazzle us with a perspective that brings together Euripides and the more recent Clint Eastwood.