By Alex Leff
Tico Times Staff | aleff@ticotimes.net

A new exhibition by two Tico urbanites in San José's Barrio Amón makes no attempt to play to the green gallery, for which Costa Rica is famous. Instead, artists Sebastián Mello and Luciano Goizueta have chosen the concrete jungle as their landscape of choice.

“I've always lived in the city and I've noticed that the city (here) is a place nobody pays attention to. If they want to do something they like, they get away from the city, going to the mountains or the beach,” noted Goizueta, 25.

“I wanted to salvage the attractiveness of the city. I'm speaking aesthetically, beyond nightlife.”

Both Goizueta and Mello, 29, splash lively color into the urban landscape in their new, almost 30-piece joint exhibit “Contextos Urbanos” (Urban Contexts) at Galería Amón.

“I've always liked to work with vivid colors,” said Mello, who makes silkscreen prints out of photographed images of such scenes as feet beating a crowded pavement in New York's Chinatown. “Cities can get really gray, but then suddenly you can find lots of colors in certain parts,” he said.

Mello prints the scenes over plastic buffing compound, “an industrial material – like working with materials from the city,” he said.

Goizueta also tends toward the louder reaches of the color wheel, though he uses acrylic paint on canvas. He also draws creatures representing Costa Rica's better-known natural side, such as shellfish and plantlife, and crams them into the urban scene, sometimes creating a rather poignant traffic jam.

Raised in San José – Mello by Uruguayan parents and Goizueta by Argentineans – the artists first met at the University of Costa Rica. Since art school their common love of cityscapes has flowered, although this is their first joint venture.

“We both use the concept of the stain,” said Goizueta, pointing to parallels in their work. Mello calls it the “mancha urbana,” an urban stain, which he said partly relates to overpopulation and other city problems that spread and spread.

“We may be a small city,” said Mello. “But now we have the same problems as big cities. We've got urban issues.”

For more information on this exhibition, visit the gallery's Web site: www.amon937.com.