Y Gallery is pleased to present Gone with the wind…, a solo exhibition by Peruvian artist Miguel Aguirre, curated by Cecilia Jurado. Last year, Y Gallery presented a two-person exhibition called El Fin (The End) with Aguirre and Swiss artist Christoph Draeger. For El Fin, Aguirre painted images from iconic tragic news, a series that took us through recent contemporary history. His approach to the subject reminded us of the mission of documentation so prevalent in old paintings. For Gone with the wind…, Aguirre has created a group of oil paintings with imagery exclusively appropriated from photograms of American films. Aguirre referred to each work as, “An attempt to represent fragments of the visual Americana throughout one of its most significant and potent cultural products: cinema.” On this occasion, the references are divided. On the one hand, Aguirre has selected films that combine the objective components of historical facts with the subjectivity inherent in a film director’s decisions. On the other hand, Aguirre has chosen the Top 10 most watched American films of all times, movies that represent what Americans like to see. The combination of the narration of true facts and fictional tales seen by massive audiences makes Aguirre’s selection a very profound source to understand American idiosyncrasy and thus, the so called American dream.

The exhibition is divided in three parts: landscapes from Citizen Kane, The Godfather I, Casablanca, Raging Bull, Singin´ in the Rain, Gone With the Wind, Vertigo and Wizard of Oz, films included in AFI´s Best American Films. The second part contains portraits of the male superheroes Superman, Captain America, Spiderman, Batman and Iron Man in a series of 5 paintings entitled Masks bearing the names of the actors who portrayed them: Christopher Reeve, Matt Sallinger, Tobey Maguire, Christian Bale and Robert Downey Jr

The third part is a sole painting, Holcomb, November 1959 (according to McGrath), a painting of a beautiful suburban house in the middle of a big field. This house, located in the Holocomb County in Kansas, belonged to the Clutter family, whose murder pushed Truman Capote to write In Cold Blood.

Miguel Aguirre Vega (Lima, 1973) has exhibited internationally, having solo shows in Barcelona, Madrid, Valparaíso, Guayaquil, New York, Samedan, Gijón and Lima. He has participated in Postfacio: melancolías de la violencia. Vídeo peruano: post-guerra, tras-dictadura (2000-2009) Fundación Simón I. Patiño, Santa Cruz (2010); Story Book/Story, Palacete del Embarcadero, Santander (2010); The Non-Age en la Kunsthalle, Winterthur (2009); Biennal d´Art de Valls(2007); Miradas de fin de siglo I, III y IV, MALI Museo de Arte de Lima (2005-2007); Proyecto Boda, MEIAC, Badajoz (2003); Políticas de la diferencia, Arte iberoamericano fin de siglo, Centro de Convenciones de Pernambuco, Recife. Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires. Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, San Juan (2002); 3ª Bienal de Mercosur, Porto Alegre (2001) and II Bienal Nacional de Lima (2000). He lives and works in Barcelona.