Miguel Vilca Vargas

What Búho himself says about his work:

«I want my paintings to be the mirror of our own face, the portrait of real life. I want to look at ourselves as we deny it and capture the moments of delicious and terrifying silence at the same time. To do this I take advantage of some of my fantasies and experiences of the jungle, memories of myself as a pilgrim through my own internal labyrinth. The paintings are silent and at the same time talk about the past about the present and the future in a universal language, human words are useless. Since the beginning of all ages the main theme is man and woman – the masculine and feminine principle. The common point is creation, the two principles are attracted to it and repelled at the same time.

The weather in those places means nothing, there reigns the vagueness and humidity of the air that reaches almost 100%. The environment of the ancient forest with trees older than modern civilization, with plant species from the time before the first evidence of man, that environment with its colors and dark corners, with the frightening sounds that freeze the blood, with the singing of birds hidden from view, with the waving of mischievous mosquitoes and clouds of happily buzzing mosquitoes, with such humidity in the air that it is not worth wiping off the sweat. A place, where one sinks to the past, to the world of silent ancestors. Place full of spirits and fear of the unknown. A disconcerting place. On the one hand full of life and exuberant vegetation, on the other hand permeated by death that is ubiquitous but without which life would be meaningless. Space, where people still live, who, thanks to their ancestral tradition and experiences transmitted from one generation to another, are capable of communicating with other worlds, inaccessible to us, civilized. A place that does not yet distract one with the products of modern civilization, a place where one can be with oneself, a place where the natives do not know what the word bored means."

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WOOD TURNED INTO PENCIL 

To breathe in sepia and black in the midst of this greenery, you need an excuse, a story or to witness many. A fantasy that revives testimonies of abandoned and forgotten people who are discovered in their humid and exotic nature, showing us their bodies that eat the myths and sweat them, dry the pores of their existence between redemption and sin, betrayal and love, the fear of punishment and the longing to find the light... that is why we evoke the classics so we avoid false shamans and incomprehensible icaros; Alone as they came alongside a story, the same story that later made them break their spirit, so we refer them to the happy dance of the Shipibo world creating a dialogue between the classic and the exotic...the river and the shadow travel the same way.                                                                                                                                      This dialogue is with the deepest places, questioning our weaknesses and fears, a mirror of our true subconscious, because we need to follow the footprints of the river until we find the YACURUNA, see the SNAKE naked, taste the meat of the MAIDEN fish and also know how to read MAPACHO smoke, are escapes to continue breathing in times when perhaps only by dreaming do we resist this journey against reality. So after visiting new rivers, trying new flavors and trying to build a MALOCA where there is no jungle, it will always cause injuries; Sometimes the being that came from heaven can abandon you on the journey towards the eternal... then there again all that remains is to dream about your grandfather, who taught you how to survive among the murky waters and the endless stormy nights, who  teach you how to row on a RIVER WITHOUT WATER...I turn off my last MAPACHO.