La Vida Eterna, an exhibit by Guillermo Lorca

In June, I went to Santiago's Museo Nacional de Belles Artes and saw a very exciting exhibit of contemporary painting: La Vida Eterna (Etenernal Life) by Guillermo Lorca.

I don't know if Lorca's recognition represents any kind of trend in the world of art. If it does, then we are returning to an appreciation of staggering technical achievement.

His paintings are unabashedly baroque, with the photorealism of a virtuoso. These 20-odd, massive, master-level canvases were pumped out in the period of one year.

Lorca brings to mind Vermeer with his base ingredients: fair-faced girls in shadowy rooms, light streaming through windows, exquisitely-detailed household objects.

But that is where Lorca departs. From the calmness of these motifs erupts a gorgeous, nightmarish surrealism. In the centerpieces of the exhibit, we follow a girl named Laura, Lorca's red- or blue-haired Alice, down a rabbit-hole. Into a mad world of no adults and a menagerie of beasts. Wildfires and dinner parties hosted by the likes of Heironeous Boscsh.

Dogs of so many breeds bring to mind the riotous, good-natured curs roaming the streets of Latin American cities. They exult in the chaos of these works, but their violence never seems to be directed at Laura. Indoors or out, Lorca also obsesses over the birds of the air, an ornithologist par excellence.

Stepping outside into a world of perlescent-grey skies, the brooding skies of Chile, Lorca's paintings approach an apocalypse that's rooted in the elemental. The violence of these scenes, the only ones which don't feature a girl, refuses to be forthright. The occasional animal carcass suggests that the sloughs of red on the fringes of these works is gore, but upon closer inspection, it's strawberry jam. And where a horde of strays is devouring a cow, a cascade of milk in the place of blood.

In a different pair of landscapes, a child ventures forth, even more vulerable than before, still serene. In the distance, Eden is burning, perhaps a quiet nod to the ecological alarm bells ringing across the planet.

In his more restrained works, girls lounge in the billowy white sheets of massive beds. The outlandishness is limited to the presence of a calm animal or two. More tension comes from a child's beauty and vulnerability, on the verge of indecent, from serenity in a situation that feel threatening for some reason you can't put your finger on. Lorca manages to make furniture scary.  

In the title-piece of the exhibition, La Vida Eterna, is my favorite. The composition is impeccable. It's as atmospheric as the rest, but spares us the sinister undertones. It relishes in the fantasy world that nature represents to the child, as Laura hangs from the bough of an old tree, accompanied by dogs and at least 11 different species of birds. For a moment, all living things are silent compatriots, nonchalantly observing this bizarrely beautiful place called Eternal Life.