Ramírez presents a series of linotype printings sometimes on white handmade paper,
some others on a unique composition of forms and colors. Either way, the portrayed is a
mythological character that invites us to discover its primitive origin. La Pincoya, for
example, a benefic spirit of the Pacific Ocean (specifically from Chiloé Island), is recalled
by the Chilean artist as dancing in the Belgian northern sea. By printing her on different
supports, he lets her dance on a myriad of stages, surfaces, and implications. Her dance
varies from one support to another as displaying a lively story of performances.
Linotype printmaking
We may agree that “printmaking is its process”, yet not as a specific kind of procedure
but rather as a process as such. Printing is a process since it allows us to reproduce an
image several times. However, the remarkable success in reproducing depends on
erasing the singularity of who does it and when. This way, we easily distinguish between
the time for creating an image and the one for printing it. While the first one remarks who
made it and why, the second one, instead, remains silent at service for the cause. This
is since its success in reproducing depends on technical restrictions that set the creative
effort towards the economy of the image. We count only on simple gestures to tell a
whole story.
Calibán Ramírez is well aware of all of that. His mythological characters are made
with the simplest gestures. Although his attempt does not finish there. His purpose goes
to the point to make explicit his handwork by using an expressionist style of cuts on the
linoleum, which reminds us of the woodcuts of Edvard Munch, Erich Heckel, and Emil
Nolde. By means of it, he becomes primitive in a time in which all has digital precision,
as well as his work a Manifesto about our vulnerability in tension with the printing process
that erases any peculiarity that our openness to contingencies may offer.