Eamon Ore-Giron, “Tras los ojos (Behind the Eyes)”

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Location: Location: Sarah M. & Charles E. Seay Building

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Eamon Ore-Giron, Tras los ojos (Behind the Eyes), 2023.

American, 1973

Los Angeles-based artist Eamon Ore-Giron is interested in exploring the intersections of different cultures and identities. His work reflects his deep connections to the Latinx community and is a challenge to the erasure of its stories from art history and the North American public sphere. By drawing upon a broad range of artistic movements and traditions, he produces a fresh visual language that creates new meanings as well as unexpected connections between European, pre-Columbian, contemporary indigenous, and popular Latin American influences.

Ore-Giron created Tras los ojos (Behind the Eyes) for the university’s Department of Psychology. The artwork began as a small painting that was later reproduced as a large digital print on canvas. Its design was inspired in part by ophthalmological diagrams that illustrate how we receive visual information. Ore-Giron’s biography also influenced his decision to focus on the eye. When Ore-Giron was twenty-eight years old, he discovered a small black spot in his vision. At first, he thought it was temporary, but medical tests revealed that he had the same genetic condition that affected his father and ultimately led his family to emigrate to the United States instead of settling in Peru. This experience encouraged Ore-Giron to reflect on the role of anatomy in our perception of reality.

While Tras los ojos (Behind the Eyes) primarily employs the vocabulary of hard-edged geometric abstraction, it also references the natural world. The work’s palette of rich, solid colors evoke the moments before sunset, with a series of conical shapes and gradient rays in shades of purple, sky blue, and pale pink. Ore-Giron describes the gently curving lines at the top of the work as “the stratosphere of the painting,” and “the edge of the atmosphere where things start to bend.” The result is a striking metaphor for the flow of information between the external world and the mind.