The artistic practice of Karlos Cárcamo (San Salvador, El Salvador, 1967) is articulated as a formal exploration of the languages and histories of abstraction. In the revisions of these imaginaries, the artist combines visual references hailing from an array of resources in the history of Western art, urban culture and street art. Cárcamo’s sculptural assemblages, expanded painting and artistic interventions in public spaces operate within a liminal field stretching between modern languages, popular tradition and post-conceptual practices.
This interview sees Cárcamo discuss his profound relationship with the languages of Latin American abstraction, a link that developed later owing to his studies in the USA, his place of residence after emigrating from El Salvador in the early 1970s. This approach took place during a trip to Mexico in 2002, when the artist immersed himself in a geopolitical and symbolic territory that enabled him to open new lines in his artistic investigations. In this dialogue, Cárcamo recounts his entry into the El Salvador and Central American cultural scene and explains some of the keys to and customary aesthetic resources in his working methodology, found in the work Un movimiento concreto I-VI (A Concrete Movement I-VI, 2018), which is part of the Museo Reina Sofía Collection.