{"id":16695,"date":"2025-10-16T20:27:54","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T20:27:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/10\/16\/artist-interview-eamon-ore-giron-on-keeping-ancient-deities-alive\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T20:27:57","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T20:27:57","slug":"artist-interview-eamon-ore-giron-on-keeping-ancient-deities-alive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/10\/16\/artist-interview-eamon-ore-giron-on-keeping-ancient-deities-alive\/","title":{"rendered":"Artist Interview: Eamon Ore-Giron On Keeping Ancient Deities Alive"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Los Angeles artist Eamon Ore-Giron with his sprawling panoramic piece, Tomorrow\u2019s Monsoon<\/em>. Courtesy of James Cohan Gallery<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When I visited Eamon Ore-Giron<\/a>\u2019s Talking Shit with Amaru<\/i>, currently on display in \u201cGrounded\u201d at LACMA, I was struck by the painting\u2019s congenial quality\u2014the vibrant color palette, the bold shapes summoning the eye from one edge to the next. The composition borders on symmetry, though never fully embraces it, and the painting as a whole is animated by a certain verve and versatility. The negative space serves as a visual digestif, arranging itself around the striking motifs and the vivid colors, which open themselves to the viewer\u2019s interpretation. As the title implies, Talking Shit with Amaru<\/i> is a conversation, albeit a visual one.<\/p>\n

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The painting, which depicts the transdimensional hybrid creature of Andean mythology, is idiomatic of the Los Angeles-based artist\u2019s half-abstract, half-representational style. In his Talking Shit<\/i> series, Ore-Giron has conducted an ongoing conversation with the artistic legacy of the ancient Americas, embracing symbols and forms from ancient Andean and Incan textile, architecture, mosaic and ceramic practice. He especially favors the artistic technique of contour rivalry\u2014a visual style rooted in the Chav\u00edn culture of the central Andes. Ore-Giron\u2019s own style has cycled through various stages of figuration and abstraction, a process by which he has developed his visual language\u2014one that engages the expectations of contemporary Western abstraction, while communing with the arcana of ancient American artistry.<\/p>\n

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Talking Shit with Amaru<\/em> by Eamon Ore-Giron, a painted conversation depicting an ancient Andean deity. Courtesy of James Cohan Gallery<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cDepending on the heritage, a lot of abstraction lives side by side with the figure in the form,\u201d Ore-Giron tells Observer. \u201cNature can provide some of the original forms in abstraction, like the pattern on a snake\u2019s skin or the pattern on an insect.\u201d<\/p>\n

Disparate ecologies: Amaru at LACMA<\/h3>\n

Nature\u2014and its impact\u2014was a core theme of \u201cGrounded,\u201d which mapped perfectly onto Ore-Giron\u2019s 2021 painting. \u201cThis idea of nature is not something external. It\u2019s something internal,\u201d he says when asked what excited him about the premise of the exhibition. \u201cThis piece, in particular, is internal in the sense that it\u2019s a story that I carry with me\u2014the gods that live here and still live here. Being \u2018grounded,\u2019 essentially, can actually be manifested in stories and in imagery and in a rekindling of a personal relationship to these deities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ore-Giron\u2019s work favors the viewer\u2019s personal connection with its subject over impressing a precise intention on its form or meaning. As such, in Talking Shit with Amaru<\/i>\u2014which appears, at first, as a vivid constellation of shapes, colors and varied opacities\u2014takes on different dimensions the longer the viewer regards it. A body forms out of the multicolored coordinate circles, talons bookend fluid lines, a tongue bolts down the width of the linen canvas. Fittingly, Amaru is a deity with the ability to transcend the boundaries of the aerial and terrestrial worlds, a celestial interloper. He explains that, having very few depictions of this particular creature, he mostly drew from Amaru\u2019s mythographic descriptions. In his depiction of the god, Amaru is not an ancient deity but\u00a0 one that rhymes with the conventions and culture of modern-day Latin America.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are so many different ways in which ancient history interfaces with modernity,\u201d Ore-Giron explains, expressing his fascination with the ways in which ancient aesthetics and stories have survived into the modern day, and how our concept of modernity often informs our interpretation of the past. For example, the name \u201cAmaru\u201d carries vastly different implications in today\u2019s Andean culture than it once did, eliciting notions of both divine power and individual identity. Among the Peruvian resistance fighters, \u201cT\u00fapac Amaru\u201d was a name given to someone who fought against colonial powers. In Talking Shit with Amaru<\/i>, Ore-Giron effects a portrayal that incorporates not only figure, but legacy.<\/p>\n

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Ore-Giron\u2019s tools of the trade: mineral paints, a careful color palette and stretched raw linen. Courtesy of James Cohan Gallery<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s interesting that these deities then can take on these names in a culture,\u201d Ore-Giron continues. \u201cEven as the culture model changes so much. It goes through so many different changes, [but] doesn\u2019t stay fixed. It\u2019s not static. The most fascinating thing is the ways in which these deities and these ideas and the visual language all around it are constantly being reinvented.\u201d<\/p>\n

Resistance, reinvention, repetition<\/h3>\n

This theme of reinvention and resistance is present in every fiber of Ore-Giron\u2019s work, from the subject matter to his preference for painting on raw linen as opposed to pristine, gessoed canvas. (\u201cThere\u2019s sometimes little blades of grass that are accidentally woven in the factory,\u201d Ore-Giron says of the linen. \u201cIt\u2019s very physical.\u201d) A musician as well as a visual artist, his creative identities often intersect at the very same juncture of reinterpretation and cross-cultural exchange. He lived in Mexico City in the 1990s and found a wealth of inspiration from the city\u2019s DJ culture, which often sampled and mixed Peruvian music. He was fascinated by the subculture\u2019s decision to find its primary inspiration in another Latin American culture as opposed to a Western one. \u201cInstead of being oriented towards the north, toward the United States or toward Europe,\u201d Ore-Giron elaborates. \u201cTheir primary focus was the south and to look to the south for inspiration.\u201d<\/p>\n

Similarly, Ore-Giron synthesizes Latin American folk music such as Cumbia with the esoteric production techniques of artists such as MF DOOM<\/a>. \u201cI think it had a profound impact on the way that I approach visual language as well,\u201d Ore-Giron says, \u201cbecause it made me want to look deeper into the histories of visual language in Latin America. On a conceptual level, that\u2019s where the music and the art really are working together.\u201d As such, on Ore-Giron\u2019s grounded linen canvases, where abstraction meets figuration, antiquity meets modernity and a visual rhythm that rings above all, strong and resonant.<\/p>\n

Talking Shit with Amaru<\/i><\/b> is on view in LACMA\u2019s \u201c<\/b>Grounded<\/b><\/a>\u201d through June 21, 2026. James Cohan Gallery in Tribeca will show \u201c<\/b>Eamon Ore-Giron<\/b><\/a>\u201d from November 7 through December 20, 2025.<\/b><\/p>\n

More Arts interviews<\/b><\/h3>\n

\t\t\t\t\"Repeating<\/p><\/div>\n