Carlos Aguirre, recipient of a South Florida Cultural Consortium painting grant and winner of the "Best of Show" in the Hortt Competition at the Fort Lauderdale Art Museum, has exhibited woodcuts and paintings in Holland, Peru, Norway and the USA. Here, Aguirre presents his own selection of 30 oil paintings designed to transport viewers back to the world of Pre Inca, colonial and postmodern times.

Aguirre, a Native American Quechwa from Peru, finds inspiration for his art in the Inca, Latino, and North American cultures. His aesthetic objectives are rooted in a close relationship between concept and process. He searches for the unification of music and two dimensional art as in pre colombian times. He does not search for beauty only, but strives also for a non-European view of art. The artist starts his creative works by sketching images or inner visions. For him, all images are end products reflecting cultural life. He collects ideas from art history, childhood memories, dreams, Andean music, media, geography, and popular culture. Aguirre then alters and decomposes these visuals by drawing them over and over in his sketchbooks. By deconstructing and rebuilding these images, he transforms their original meaning. Through this exploration, the primary symbolism is buried and is resurrected into a new visual narrative. As the artist begins a new painting, his motivation is often totally unconscious and abstract. Other times, he intentionally addresses the struggles of native and minority peoples.

Aguirre also finds a creative outlet in Amazonian and Andean performance. In Pre-Inca times art and music were related. Music is an art and a shamanistic life style in Andean and Amazonian tradition. In the Inca tradition when he plays the bamboo flutes they, the bamboo itself, come back to life and sings with its own voice. Aguirre feels that the idea of art and music being separate arts, originates in Greece. It is a Eurocentric concept he does not accept. When not painting, he makes and plays quena flutes, panpipes and Native American drums. He performs with Inca Spirit, a Miami-based band. Through both his painting and music, Aguirre hopes to preserve the legacy of his Inca ancestors and to present a contemporary view of indigenous art.