One Work: The De la Torre Brothers

Einar and Jamex de la Torre, Saturnino, 2016, blown glass, lenticular print, resin castings, LED light box 28.5 x 28.5 x 8 in. Photo courtesy La Caja Galería.

[Image description: A square light box with orange, red and brown imagery. A blue glass head is affixed to the center of the box.]

The experience of walking into the room in which Saturnino hangs—amongst a variety of De la Torre creations—is one of overwhelm, maybe a tinge of nausea, but a playfulness too: the colors bounce from one composition to the next, constructing an atmosphere of busy creation, each piece with a life (and message) of its own. The works around Saturnino  feature a leering Donald Trump figure, a lucha libre wrestler, and a public transport train that wears a worried expression on its antlered face. Saturnino is a mixed-media composition featuring a glassblown head affixed to a colorful rococo tableau of classically rendered angels. The backdrop presents a lenticular scene: the neoclassical seraphim are flanked by flames and lit from behind. The baphomet figure at the center lurches forth from this circle of hellfire. Its roiling eyes gaze out, unfocused. A pile of crab legs fans out and curls around a shell below the creature,  while a pair of antlers extends outward and above. 

Einar and Jamex De La Torre’s works prominently feature blown glass—an unpredictable medium that leaves much room for contortion and irregularity. The glass’ warped quality gives the artists’ repertoire a bizarre and eccentric character. Saturnino is no different, its bulbous, distorted face staring out at the viewer  from eye level. Combining blown glass with lenticular imagery—a style of printing which creates images that appear to move with the viewer—the piece creates an animated three-dimensional scene: the lenticular actively burns, alight with dancing hellfire. In its frenzied delirium, Saturnino draws from a range of historical references, collapsing culture and history to suggest the coming of the end of times.

The  work’s title, Saturnino, evokes Saturn, the ancient Roman god of excess, time, periodic renewal,  and liberation. Viewing the piece, I am struck by the facial expression of the central figure, which, with the works’ title, elicits Francisco Goya’s 1823 painting Saturn Devouring His Son. Like  Goya’s figure, Saturnino’s eyes bulge and gaze out, seeking and beseeching, arresting in an imploring, bleary stare.

What better way to signify the culmination, and dramatic downfall, of great excess than by pairing the Roman god Saturn with rococo aesthetics, a style famously touted by Marie Antoinette and the opulently doomed pre-French Revolution royalty under King Louis the XVI? Characterized by exorbitant detail, spiral motifs (rococo takes its name from the French rocaille, meaning shell) and ornamentation, The De La Torre Brothers have created their own (in)version of the style. By doing so, Saturnino flattens history and culture into a time that may not last that much longer.

Perhaps they speak of times to come, the joyous burning of ails such as colonialism. Or maybe they speak to accelerationism—a harbinger touted by academics and critical theorists that the march of time under late capitalism will get progressively worse until the container (society, the world) can no longer hold, literally burning.

Yet there is also joy here, a delirious liberation: it’s all on fire anyway.

—Chase Bucklew, independent researcher. Bucklew was a participant in the 2022 HereIn Writers Workshop.