“Sexodélico” is the best word I can figure out to describe Marcelo Pombo‘s art. Not only many of you are about to be introduced to his talent. Besides, you will have total access to decades of his production.
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is an international progressive initiative that promotes the open sharing of knowledge. The legal frame is the special copyrights license Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0). Actually, it is quite simple and makes a lot of sense in our globalized culture. Surprisingly, this blogger learned about it from his South American network.
You share your intelectual property. Although you accept that your work can be modified and manipulated freely, there are two simple conditions, in case you borrow some one else’s work. First, you must give appropriate credit to the source and declare whether or not changes have been made. Second, you must share what you produced under the same license.
As I just learned about it, let’s try it.
DISCLAIMER: All art work illustrating this article “Sexodélico” are images taken from “Marcelo Pombo – Imágenes Liberadas“, or their modifications created by this blogger. Everyone is free to share, remix, transform, or build upon this material, under the same license as the original. (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Now, let’s get into our sexodélico artist.
Sexodélico Art
Recently, Argentine artist Marcelo Pombo liberated two decades of his production. He did it by opening the website “Marcelo Pombo – Imágenes Liberadas“, and publishing there twenty years of his art works, in the frame of Creative Commons.
Right now and in this article, we will only focus on his liberated art. In case you do not know Marcelo, we recommend you to do some research. It worth it. However, we must warn you not to search for “sexodélico”, we made up that adjective.
After scouting throughout Marcelo Pombo’s production, you will understand. Within “sexodélico” we are trying to contain the two dimensions that always stroke us the hardest when contemplating Marcelo Pombo’s drawings and paintings.
On one hand, we are lured towards the pornographic excess of visual stimuli. Certainly, even when they are almost always depicting a surreal and psychedelic universe, images are not always sexual or even erotic. Nevertheless, there is a consistent sensuality and eroticism in all of Marcelo’s production. Evidently, this is observable in his drawings celebrating hedonism, but also in the dark ones he grouped as “Dibujos de 1983“.
On the other hand, despite the countless influences from USA and European pop and urban artists, Marcelo Pombo’s art has a clear South American flavor, coming probably from his artisanal, handcrafted nature. The least we could do was to use the Spanish version of sexodelic to describe his imagery. I know, I also made up the English word.
Mirroring the obsessive details of his designs, Marcelo offers us several ways to categorize and organize our exploration through two decades of his production. We chose to follow a chronological journey, throughout the four videos included in the catalogue.
The Sao Paulo Drawings
As you will see, the site is very easy to navigate. All webpages are fully bilingual Spanish/English. Additionally, the four videos are viewable in Youtube. Conveniently, you can set Youtube’s AI to generate subtitles in many languages. In case you are an English speaker, my advise is to watch the videos up to the end. Once the images end, you will see a print translation of the texts in off. This translation is spotless. In contrast, the subtitles generated automatically in English have some issues. Unfortunately, I cannot verify the accuracy of the automatically generated subtitles in other languages.
To start, Marcelo takes us to 1982, when Argentinean Military Junta invaded the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas) and started a hopeless war. Fortunately, our sexodélico artist could run away to Brazil to avoid the draft.
Noticeably, the Sao Paulo drawings are easy to distinguish from the rest of Marcelo Pombo’s sexodélico universe. Somehow, they seem shy. As opposite to his later work, he seems to be avoiding sharp contrasts with very taint pencil and ink strokes.
However, we can clearly see the sexodélico brand even in these early works. The celebratory hedonism of characters and objects is evident, as well as the syncretic mix of different pop art influences.
The 1983 Drawings
Back to Argentina, the 1983 Drawings also contrast against the rest of our sexodélico artist’s production. If in the Sao Paulo Drawings we miss thick and defined black strokes of ink and overcrowded designs, the contrast now is other.
Dated in the last months of the dying tyranny, we miss the celebratory hedonism evident in other periods. However, the sexodélico touch is still there. Even the darkest imagery, carrying the most terrifying meanings, has something sensual and reminiscent of orgasms. There is a lack of solid images. Everything seems to be melting, dripping, falling, and sliding. We can imagine tears of pain but we mostly see sperm dropping in despair.
Instead of celebratory hedonism, this blogger senses tragic sensuality. One where there is no escape from the terror of the bloody military Junta. In Sao Paulo, we dove in a sexodélico ocean of orgasms and sensual imagery. In 1983, we masturbate in the dark tragically and hopelessly trying to forget the horrors of the military murderers. This is the only period where Memento Moris wins over Carpe Diem in Marcelo’s Pombo’s creation.
GAG & Sodoma
During the last months of the military tyranny and the first years of the new democratic regime, Buenos Aires’ cultural, artistic and political life went through an explosive flourishing (la Movida). The new series of Sexodélico works is dated 1984/1985, right at the core of “La Movida”. Coincidently, this is when Marcelo Pombo’s and this blogger’s not so parallel lives came together.
While Marcelo was living his teen and young formative years in cosmopolitan and liberal Buenos Aires, this blogger was having a quite different experience. My teen formative years were in a traditional and Catholic provincial capital inside the country, and then I was drafted before going to college. Once the Falklands War ended, I finally moved to Buenos Aires.
I met Marcelo in my first meeting with the GAG (Grupo de Acción Gay) in 1984. This blogger had been going through an intense transformative year in 1983, exposed to his first readings of scientific politics and sociology. Still digesting my first readings of Marx and USA constructivism, I walked into this meeting to my first smoke and my first Sodoma magazine.
A sexodélico political weapon
Unintentionally but instinctively, I had been unlearning my previous formative years. Marcelo’s sexodélico art was one more spicy ingredient in the explosive coctel that demolished many of my internalized heteronormative structures.
If you read Sodoma today, you would be impressed at the visionary and insightful advocacy for a fluid sexuality. Although the GAG and Sodoma are not isolated events, but landmarks in a long line of queer activism and cultural and intellectual production in South America, our visibility and influence was never matched by other revolutionary groups. After those years of hoping for the sexual revolution, In Argentina, as in everywhere else, the movement for the rights of sexual minorities devolved into a lobby of conservative gays asking for gay marriage.
As any depiction of sexual assertiveness and positiveness, Marcelo Pombo’s sexodélico universe has a clear revolutionary potential. Surely, it has played a role in the local evolution of sexuality and gender’s social construction. At least, it has played a key role in my personal deconstruction and awareness.
However, Marcelo consistently uses the word “gay” to describe his artistic sensibility. We disagree. We Actually think that there is no much “gay” in Marcelo Pombo’s sexodélico dimension. Furthermore, we could say that as “gay” loses all its questioning and revolutionary content to become another tamed and domesticated sexual identity, Marcelo’s imagery becomes less and less ‘gay’, and more and more “queer” and “questioning”.
The Puerto Madryn Drawings
The 80s were the years of “la Movida”, the democratic political, cultural, and intellectual awakening after Totalitarian darkness in Argentina. For people from my generation, like Marcelo, these were also formative years. Fortunately, I had the privilege to meet our sexodélico hero right at that time of my personal journey. He introduced me to many things that brought immense joy to my life.
In the 90s, when the next series is dated, our lives are back to be not so parallel. Our friendship continued, but we did not share anymore common projects like our political activism. I went on with my interdisciplinary butterfly dilettantism. Marcelo continued cultivating his visual artist talents and developing his sexodélico brand. We used to work together in the 80s. In the 90s, we would meet in the line to see the last Bruce LaBruce‘s movie and smoke a joint.
In this set, Marcelo shares his production during a trip to Patagonia. As we go through the drawings, we can appreciate how the sexodélico brand flourishes and develops. Dripping, melting shapes eroticize even abstract images in a psychedelic syncretism of international pop culture depicting a universe of ludic obsessive detail and patterns.
Sexodélico Century
Melting shapes, and indistinguishable beginnings and endings abound in Marcelo’s figurative and abstract patterns. They speak of a lack of sharp definitions and distinct boundaries. Perhaps Marcelo would still describe his sensibility as gay nowadays, even for his late works. Nevertheless, I would yet insist on highlighting how little “gay” his pornographic and ludic depiction of pleasure is. I cannot imagine one of Marcelo’s sexodélico works hanging on Pete Buttigieg’s living room walls.
Marcelo Pombo stands out amongst a prolific stream of South American artists and intellectuals developing their production away from USA Puritanic culture. Hopefully, this article will inspire curiosity to some of you. In my opinion, Sexodélico and Neo Vanilla landscapes have much in common.
Remember, not only you are free to enjoy all this sexodélico beauty. Additionally, you can download the works and operate on them at your pleasure. Just do not forget to recognize the source, and to distribute your work under the same license and conditions.
I am getting ready to visit Argentina. This chance to explore Marcelo’s sexodélico landscapes comes with perfect timing. After previewing the local escorts offer, a flashback to my vertiginous 80s is the perfect warm up for the incoming trip.
Stay tuned. I am going to be bored and boring during May in DC. But in June I will be visiting Buenos Aires. Of course, you can expect my usual reports.
Hasta la próxima pinga, amig@s!
