Miguel Miguel A. Aragón is a native of Ciudad Juárez, a primary battleground in the violent war between rival cartels and law enforcement agencies for control of the drug trade into the United States. Thousands of people die in drug-related violence every year in México. Content for Aragón’s images comes from photographs published by the media, in print and digital format, depicting crude and raw forensic evidence. Aragón’s work is derived from a need to find meaning in these brutal events that reposition the corpse in one’s field of vision, reminding us that our physical existence is finite.
“Beginning with the idea of erasure as language, I concentrate on the use of processes that are reductive in nature. Any form of erasure, however violently destructive, can be seen as constructive in some way; something comes through the destruction, the negation of an image is not actually nothing. It is my intention to transform the image, through erasure, from crude and unbearable into a more beguiling or subtle way of presenting these disturbing images. The void thus creates a space that nurtures the memory of what was before, engaging the viewer with a more intricate experience of the image. What I am looking for, as a result of these deletions is not to forget the horrific crimes these images convey; rather, I am searching for an understanding of what has happened by acquiring a sense of catharsis.”-Miguel Aragón, 2016
Working at Flatbed, Aragon brought these concepts into the process of creating three editions: one as an etching and two as woodcut relief prints. Aragon used a drill to penetrate the copper matrix for the etching then stage-bit layers of aquatint with hand applied half-tone patterns to create the image. The woodcuts were created by directly drilled with variations of drill bit sizes through super-enlarged half tone images into the woodblocks.
The three editions are the woodcuts Aplacado (el Veladero) and Aplacado (Emboscada) and the etching Aplacado (Siete cascos percudidos). All three have a 48 x 36 inch image size and are pirnted on Rives BFK paper measuring 51 1/2 by 38 1/2 inches. These prints are already a part of prestigious museum collections including the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum in Saratoga, New York, the Boston Museum of Art and the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
For better images and more information please link to Aragón's page here: ARAGON. The woodcuts and etching are available through Flatbed Press.
