El autodidacta [The Self-Taught]

Since 1987 Alvaro Oyarzún’s work has consisted of large installations of accumulated drawings, paintings, and photographs spread over a gallery wall. The subject of his work is his own training as a self-taught artist and his navigation through the complexities of the contemporary art world. El autodidacta shows us the universe of the artist as a solitary and sometimes arbitrary place, demonstrated by the jumps from representation to representation (for example, from botanical illustrations to comic-book drawings). He takes some of his images from the pages of illustrated encyclopedias, while others come from his own imagination. The work covers everything from the tenets of landscape paintings to the documentation of large-scale installations, providing a confusing and sometimes overwhelming commentary on the difficulties of being an artist today.