Cowboys vs. Nazis: Juan Pérez Agirregoikoa Assesses the Political Climate at Clages
The artist shows how forms of entertainment may distract from, warn against, or encourage radicalization. How well do his metaphors fit? And when does the stretch break?
Peter, the horse is here. And so is fascism. One week ago, the right-wing extremist party AfD got the majority of votes in the German state Thuringia and became the second-strongest party in Saxony. Through painting, Juan Pérez Agirregoikoa (Baby Boomer, Spanish-French) describes the slow but steady infiltration of fascism in the West which believes to be immune against it even though it gave birth to it.
Juan works first and foremost with drawing. Usually, his style is cheeky, visually oriented around protest culture with banners, slogans, and posters. For his current show at Clages, he chose a painterly, more formalist approach. An allegorical, observant one. He takes a step back instead of explicitly mobilizing and shouting paroles. It’s not to accuse him of passively standing by as fascism takes over. I’d argue this artistic approach rather mimics what most people are doing anyway right now.
Juan fills the three floors of the gallery space with three overarching motives: Horses, ballet, and literature.
The Sad Cowboy Blues
The show title Western Perfection alludes to the geopolitical West and the cowboy trope. What do they have in common apart from the root word they share? Both the West and the Western are way too idealized. The West as the best part of the world everybody else should aspire to be part of and the Western as the feel-good movie that wipes out any history off land, serving it on a silver plate ready for conquest.
Juan paints Cowboys not as the usual heroes. He puts them on horses surrounded by dusty darkness, playing various musical instruments while a rope around their neck tightens. From a Spanish art history angle, it’s easy to think of Francisco de Goya (1746–1828, Spanish) and his The Disasters of War (1810-20) prints. It’s also impossible to combine a gloomy shade of blue with a harlequin as in Santi and Skater (2024) and not make a reference to Pablo Picasso’s (1881-1973, Spanish) Blue Period paintings. Thinking of the American Western, the tree-tied ropes hauntingly remind me of lynching mobs in the South.
Alternating between lighter and darker paint layers, Juan finishes off with pulsating, rough brushstrokes, making the acrylic look rather like wet chalk drawing. Opacity and translucence take turns. This vibrant, fauvist style results in something between Edgar Degas’s (1834-1917, French) pastels meet Franz Marc’s (1880-1916, German) colorful horses.
Juan suspends these moments in time. The cowboy musicians are still standing. They’re still playing like the Titanic quartet waiting for the ship to sink. And the horses carrying them are grazing indifferently, unbothered by the noise of their riders. The yellow-green horse’s body in Traditional Dressage, Red Drum (2024) dissolves into the blue background. How does it even carry the drum player’s weight? But in any given instance, a horse might gallop off, a cowboy’s neck snap, and his music abruptly stop. And nobody knows when it’ll happen. And it sure will.
Made into musical performers, the cowboys become harlequins, jokers, and street singers. These groups and individuals outside the class society can do one of two things. They either provide distractive entertainment or comment on politics in a way that is just elusive enough to be tolerated by the authorities. That’s why the Joker was the only one who could get away with his life when telling the king the truth: He made it entertaining.
All the cowboy-themed works in this show are titled Traditional Dressage. Even Traditional Dressage, Bottle Blonde Horse (2024), the one where there’s no human around. At first, I didn’t notice anything odd about it. Well except for the fact that these horses are painted in possibly every impossible color combination. They’re grazing on an endless field. But one horse in the foreground is alert. Did something rustle in the darkness?
So while I first thought that seeing anything political in this exact work’d be a bit of a stretch, I finally did get a perspective the better I started looking. I think of the wild horses as free beings guided by their intuition. That intuition is taken away through dressage. They learn to obey the rider, their new authority. And only some of them get to keep a glimpse of the generational instinct that kept them safe. Only some of the horses look out at the viewer, understanding that something’s off. And then I saw the white horse way back in the distance, its legs taking on an unmistakable form.
That first allusion to the swastika continues upstairs. I first thought it was a coincidence, that it’s not supposed to actually be one. Seeing the swastika appear all over the other works, I don’t know how to feel about it: You might look at the intersection of lines, rub your eyes, and wonder if that’s really a swastika you see. And then you decide that it only looks like one, and then you see it more often and more often and you deny it until it’s too late. That is one train of thought. But I can’t help but think that Juan’s use of the swastika is too easy. It’s too in-your-face. I’m sure there could have been a subtler approach that would lead onto a path of suspense that’s not like aaaah fascism, riiiiiight.
Stepping out of Line
Dance and humor take over the second floor. I enjoyed the cowboy works the most. Periodt. And even though we’re going upstairs now, I feel like it’s only going downhill from there.
Swastikas are now omnipresent. The Significant Master Lake (Blue Ballerina) (2024) imitates the form with her body. The clowns in Western Joy (2024) laugh merrily, their torsos casually laid back. But their legs march in strict formation similar to the Hindu-turned-Nazi symbol. I’d also like to mention that as we’re getting works on horse dressage and clowns, I think the circus could have been explored more profoundly.
Returning to the ballerinas, Juan made a connection to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake (1875) ballet. He drew the almost 5 min. long cartoon The Master Significant Lake (2024) with the ballet playing in the background. The dancers imitate swastikas again. And there are swans. And the dancers turn into ducks at some point…? But why? Are those duckerinas? Ducking ballerinas? Excuse the pun. But where Juan gets unmistakably boringly obvious in some points, it’s impossible to connect any threads in other instances. While Anna Jermolaewa (Gen X, Russian) made the connection between Swan Lake and Russian politics accessible at the Austrian Pavilion at the Biennale this year, I’m left confused at Clages.
But let’s give it a try together. Might ballet represent high culture that easily integrates fascism because it is sustained by a priviledged class? I’m not convinced. Might it be a reference to how cultural milestones are made into fascist ones? I mean, Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827, German) would have been horrified to learn that his Ode to Joy (1824) was made into a Nazi favorite in the Third Reich (start the video at 18:39 min). But still, why ballet? and why Swan Lake? Is it because of the evil swan and good swan? The prince mistakes Odile for Odette and falls in love with her? Does he choose fascism over democracy? I can’t think of any explanation that I’d buy myself.
Reading between the lines
On the upper floor, we get books. The works here also look more like Juan’s signature drawing style even though they’re painted. Juan painted stacks of books. My Lost Time (2024) puts softcover books by Marcel Proust into a glaring bright contrast against the pitch-black background. The title refers to Marcel’s seven-part novel In Search of Lost Time (1913-27) which follows the memories and stories of the French-socialite-protagonist.
Juan references more writers in My Fu***ng Books (2024) by also including Hannah Arendt (1906-75, German-American), Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679, British), Baruch de Spinoza (1632-77, Dutch), and Henri Lefebvre (1901-91, French). That looks to me like nothing but a literacy-flex. Like yeah, I got a shitload of books on my shelves, too. Have I even skimmed through the pages of more than 10%? Nuh-uh.
I happen to know that Hannah Arendt was an important figure in the post-war persecution of high-ranking Nazis who coined the concept of the banality of evil, arguing that many fascists weren’t actually passionately brutal but acted in routines, shrugging off the outsourced violence. I also happen to know that Thomas Hobbes extensively wrote about power structures and political hierarchy. In Leviathan (1651), he argued how the monarch is part of the people and the people are part of the monarch. Both can’t exist without each other. If we made a connection to fascism, it’s possible to argue that Hitler didn’t just pop out of nowhere. He was backed by the people and he in turn sustained the idea of a German people.
But what can I get out of these two paintings if I don’t happen to know these authors? What does uniting these books in a painted form do that having these books on an actual shelf can’t?
And then Juan lost me for sure at Dracula’s night table. Those paintings are for sure collectible af. But are they profound beyond the idea that even a blood-drinking demon indulges in self-care with a little period-blood-infused tea and a good book?
I find it such a pity that from ground floor to the top, the works go from intuitive to intellectualized. I think of the show turning increasingly classist, even though a benevolent reading might argue that Juan goes from folkloric entertainment to highbrow to intellectual, therefore addressing all classes of Western society. Hm…. meh, I doubt it. Walking through this show felt like watching a Netflix Original: The first season slaps. Every season after that just finds creative ways to lose the plot.
But there’s one truth to Juan’s approach: While the majority of intellectual, wealthy upper-class representatives look at rightwing-radicalization right now and think This could never be me, it’s especially them - or us - who need to remember that it has already been us.
Are you someone to steal horses with? Juan Pérez Agirregoikoa: Western Perfection is on view through October 12, 2024, at Clages.
Clages
Brüsseler Strasse 5
50674 Cologne
Website
Instagram: @clages @juanperezagirregoikoa
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See you soon!!!
Jennifer
The Gen Z Art Critic
maybe the reason for Swan Lake has something in common with the reason it was used at the Austrian Pavilion in Venice