This text, a critical review of the work of Gonzalo Díaz, appeared in the book El rabo del ojo. Ejercicios y conatos de crítica (The Corner of the Eye: Critical Exercises and Attempts), a collection of Pablo Oyarzún’s studies and essays about art. The book’s oblique view of the art object reveals the author’s bias and subjectivity. Oyarzún was one of the critics who emerged in Chile in the wake of the 1973 military coup d’état, a group that included Nelly Richard, Ronald Kay, and Justo Pastor Mellado, whose ideas were discussed in catalogues, debates, magazines, seminars, and publications produced by the alternative exhibition spaces that were operating at the time, galleries such as Sur, Época, Cromo, and CAL. This collection of texts reflects the desire to reprint recent works of Chilean art criticism, a trend that arose during the first two decades of the twenty-first century in an effort to gain acknowledgement and legitimization.
The emblematic work Lonquén 10 años (Lonquén 10 Years), which was originally exhibited at the Galería Ojo de Buey (Santiago, 1989) and later at F(r)icciones: Visiones del Sur, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid, 2001), was shown in Chile as part of the exhibition Lonquén (2012) at the Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos, in Santiago. The work refers to the 1978 massacre of fifteen peasants from Hornos de Lonquén who were arrested, tortured, and murdered by the repressive forces of the dictatorship.
