«Forgotten by God is a Chilean saying that refers to the defenselessness of the country, easier to exploit than to preserve.» Multimedia graphic designer Pablo Pérez Orellana shows his concern about the overexploitation of the environment in Chile, which by extension constitutes a global problem directly related to our consumption system, supported by the media. In this way, several interrelated issues are combined in the very same image: the abuse of nature, consumerism and modified identities at the mercy of advertising interests.
«The project of transforming culture into little more than a collection of brand extensions-in-waiting would not have been possible without the deregulation and privatization policies of the past three decades. In Canada under Brian Mulroney, in the U. S. under Ronald Reagan and in Britain under Margaret Thatcher (in many other parts of the world as well), corporate taxes were dramatically lowered, a move that eroded the tax base and gradually starved out the public sector. As government spending dwindled, schools, museums and broadcasters were desperate to make up their budget shortfalls and thus ripe for partnerships with private corporations. It also didn't hurt that the political climate during this time ensured that there was almost no vocabulary to speak passionately about the value of a non-commercialized public sphere. This was the time of the Big Government bogeyman and deficit hysteria, when any political move that was not overtly designed to increase the freedom of corporations was vilified as an endorsement of national bankruptcy.» (Naomi Klein, "No Logo", 2000).
Advertising covertly broadcasted on public television, false works in full buildings as an excuse to place giant tarps displaying commercial messages, billboards placed without the authorization of the relevant town halls, radio stations promoting alcoholic beverages outside the hours allowed by law. However, it is likely that the first image that comes to mind when hearing the word "vandalism" is still that of graffiti artists signing on the facades of buildings.
The fact that advertising explores the limits of the ethical and legal in order to produce new impacts on citizens is something that we all know well and Pablo proposes us to invest these roles, at least as far as public space is concerned, considering the transformation of this invasion into an advantage as a responsibility of artists. As he himself states, the problem of advertising is not the channel itself, but its messages, and both it and urban art have at their base a similar competence: the appropriation of a territory. With this premise, the Chilean artist leaves his trail on multiple publicities from the direction of art, «showing society that design is at their service, given that without them their study would have no object nor objective.» And just as design is for people, so it is the city, where Pablo unfolds and glues a paper bird that seems as electric as his T-shirt illustrations.
Symbols reminiscent of logos (which sometimes are, sometimes are not) can be found with sarcasm in Pablo's imagery, intermingling the popular culture of Chile with the artifice of globalization. It is probably because of this compendium of concerns that his inclination for his own icons arises, to the point of creating an international reference platform for the Santiago music scene called "The Chileans Underground", which can also be followed through its Facebook page where you real treasures can be found.
That effort to create communication networks between people and creative fields (design-advertising-art-music) undoubtedly has much to contribute to a project like "Ocho por Tres", which in some way has a similar purpose when it comes to connecting artists from different countries and areas, looking for different ways to face a white space in the streets of this unusual Spanish city that is Valladolid.