The graphic & plastic artist
Dandy Ruiz Estrada, a.k.a. el Dandy, is focused in placing that brand to pitch
a surrealistic-basis proposal that explores the introspection and the rraw
analysis of our society leading in something as basic as the human shape without
much decoration but as part of a pretty symbolic environment – optical games,
brain challenges, sensual references.
But el Dandy wants to link
his brand to the place where he born in 1982 – Mallaritos [Mayareetos], a
former Marcavelica District’s rural village, now a suburb of Sullana City, here
in Peru. In fact, the slogan he uses is “from Mallaritos to the world.”
Meanwhile, el Dandy has
achieved something that many artist of his kind look for in lifetime – exposing
in Europe. In fact, he was invited to join the 4th Biennial of
Contemporary Art, and his pictures were addressed to Salerno, the second
largest city in Campania Region, Central Italy, near the classic Naples.
el Dandy’s participation was
possible because of recommendations by the Colombian cultural stringer Jorge
Enrique Londoño with expolatina de Arte, and the art curator Giuseppe Gorga,
vice-president of Bienale de Salerno, who got the scientific committee of the
exposition chose two works from the Mallaritos-native artist: We inherit
from the same father and Releasing Lies.
The 4th Biennial was scheduled
for November 6th to 21st, 2021, in Salerno, and it’s the
very first European exposition that el Dandy joins. Before, he was exposing in Ecuador,
Colombia, Chile, Argentina, as well as Peru, and obviously Sullana. Other
Peruvian artists were also invited to the same biennial.
“It’s a pride for me to represent
Mallaritos in a too important event like it’s going to happen across Europe, and
Italy in particular, that as we know, it’s one of the sources of Modern and
Contemporary Art in the whole humankind history,” the plastic & visual artist
said in a public statement. “I’m very excited and thankful to have this
opportunity and I hope to enlarge my participation in the Old Continent and
around the world.”
Dandy Ruiz’s work is not only
concentrated in painting but video-art, photography (for what he even posed as
his own model, and did bodybuilding for a while purposed to that). He also
works as a teacher and he has pitched an innovative pedagogic proposal to teach
fine arts at schools across Chira Valley. He is also a recurrent contributor for
FACTORTIERRA and ChulucanasGym, plus being an illustrator and art advisor.
Salerno is a 131,000-people city
best known for his medical research, but it owns an archaeological museum, a
municipal gallery, and a museum dedicated to History of Medicine. It was also the
most important city of Lombardy Kingdom.
Four million years ago, somewhere
in the universe which name I don’t know because they never said where, there
was a highly-technified planet called Cybertron that was populated by two
contending races of robots. They were called autobots and decepticons. Whom may
I compare them with? The truth is just saying the first ones were the good and
the others were sons of a high-tech bitch.
Their planet’s sources of energy
were already dying and they faced a microchips starvation that whether they solved
like homeless, whether taking their stuff and looking for somewhere in the
space where they could flourish and survive. With the few resources they got,
the autobots chose the B-plan. They lifted up their ship, them aboard.
The decepticons, that lived cloning
everything the autobots did, were in chase mode. When they reached, they badly
boarded the vehicle. Amid the struggle, they approached too much to Earth’s
gravity that the ships lost control and crashed down in different points of the
planet. The autobots one went to the base of a volcano called Saint Hilary,
actual Oregon. Don’t seek it on Wikipedia – it doesn’t exist.
In 1984, Saint Hilary awoke and
activated the circuits of the spacecraft turned into a fossile. A surveyor
scanned the planet, that was not that hostile world they have crashed down but
something primitively technified. To make you short the tale, the decepticons
and the autobots were repaired and both concentrated in accumulating energy to
return to Cybertron. The problem is while the second ones waited for their
turn, the first ones shot lasers to everything meaning an obstacle.
What’s the love for Tawantinsuyo?
Meanwhile, the decepticons
learned that in actual Peru, the Incas had a kind of energetic conduit that
allowed them to take advantage on the energy of Earth’s core, over what they
built a pyramid-shape temple, and the robots decided to catch the resource,
terrifying the surrounding locals, apparently Cusco-natives.
After saying all this, and
look that my merit is making a running-over brief of the first nine episodes of
Transformers 1st generation, I accredit that the beloved
robots-in-disguise already have visited us, at the moment of posting this, 37
years ago, and we watched it on TV around the globe.
Although the cartoon series producers
(with Marvel Productions and Sunbow Productions) don’t have any relation to the
ones who, up to date, are rolling a movie of that franchise (with ParamountPictures), what I feel coincidental is they have chosen Cusco. Yes, I
understand because of enigmas, untold stories (the cyberspace’s gossips say it
would be based upon Tonapa or Tonupa myth), the impressing Inca architecture,
and the beautiful landscapes of Urubamba River’s Sacred Valley.
It’s not the first time that
Hollywood put an eye to this place. Since 1954 (Paramount Pictures,
coincidentally) to nowadays, the trials between successful and frustrated (like
a james Bond movie), national and foreigner, are counting for almost a hundred.
Like ever never before in the
Peruvian history of the motion picture, two features from two American
corporations that are competitors have been rolling at the same time, in the
same place, and with big budgets.
The other one is the
successful NBCUniversal Telemundo’s series La Reina del Sur (Queen of
the South) that from a biographic novel became a fiction highlighting Mexicanactress Kate del Castillo, telling the adventures of drug-trafficker Teresa
Mendoza, who really exists, but amid a kind of enlarged parallel universe.
Peacock + Artesonraju = blockbuster
Don’t stop just on the
factsheet. Transformers – The rise of beasts and La Reina del Sur
were not only rolled in Cusco. The first one did in Tarapoto, San Martin, and it
was almost to implement a location in El Ñuro, right here in Los Organos,Piura. The second one,as much as we know, put upside down Lima Downtown.
But it wasn’t about the
producers arrived, set up their cameras, let the director screams action, and
what pretty actors and actresses perform. Only in Cusco, Paramount and
Telemundo left about US$ 37,000 for filming rights and the physical
installation of the places chosen as locations, what surely has activated the
local economy.
And that’s what we know about
Cusco. We don’t have yet the fact of how much Paramount left to Municipality of
San Martin Province or how much Telemundo left to Municipality of Metropolitan
Lima. It shouldn’t be a secret – it’s public information.
The cost and the benefit of
filming in Peru
Peru is not a common
destination for scouting film-&-TV locations but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t
have them. In fact, like anywhere in the worlc, my country has houses, estates,
streets, cities, and especially natural places you should consider as the
background of the shots (even for photography) if you are planning a feature
for international audiences.
Let’s review Peru’s potentials
for locations. Maybe, it’s the country with most diversity in a territory
similar in size to California State. We don’t have fiords and tepuys but the
amount of other imaginable landscapes is overwhelming. Highlands and the Amazon
Basin were also loved by Hollywood and Europe. And the coastal strip has a
complex landscape mixing desert and valleys to discover. Add the beaches.
Piura Department is quite bigger
than Maryland State, going from sea level(even under sea level) to some summit
over 12,800 feet altitude. If I’m not wrong in numbers, we join 70% of Peru’s
biodiversity, what also means a diversity of landscapes except snow-covered
mountains. Check this out.
Of course that if you are
interested in producing anything in Peru, you have to get some reliable
connections allowing to understand with local authorities, officials and
homeowners/real estate brokers in order to do a favorable negotiation once you
have scouted the possible locations. The good news for you is like Peru is an
almost rookie in locations management, the prices you can get here may result
most competitive like anywhere around the world, especially the destinations you
are accostummed to take for this purpose.
Add to this, that Piura in
particular has three schools of social communication and many undergraduates
and graduates are making motion pictures. Plus, there’s a school of fine arts
with hundreds of junior and senior plastic artists who can work with your art
director advising and making your sets.
For sure, there are other
people and companies those can supply different products and services, since
transportation to rights & clearances, so you also can find out great local
crews in constant training, some of them awarded nationwide and worldwide.
Even, some of them are bilingual.
About the places, major
cities have a mixed architetonical style, but médium and small ones own the
typical Latin American town skyline. But going out the cities, you can take
deserts, valleys, rivers, forested and non-forested hills, mountains close to
the sea, highlands, cliffs, archaeological rests, sea, islands. What are you
thinking of? Since 1956, Piura has been
considered by Hollywood for locations, for example Cabo Blanco Beach.
You can contact me for further
information at nelsonpc.com@gmail.com
(my personal e-mail), or chat on live with me on my Facebook and Twitter
accounts. And if you’re not looking for a location but you are interested in do
some tourism at an unusual destination, but plenty of Nature, you should checkthis out.
