Jorge Alderete

Jorge Alderete (born 1971), also known as Dr. Alderete, is an Argentine illustrator, animator, editor and owner of several businesses, best known for his comic book and kitsch aesthetic in his work. Most of Alderete’s career has evolved in Mexico, where he came in 1998 and with the exception of a year in Spain, has since stayed, living and worked from his apartment in Colonia Roma in Mexico City. Most of his work is related to Mexico City’s music scene, especially rock and surf bands, having created about eighty CD covers and various other promotional items including the billboards for the 2011 Vive Latino music festival. Alderete’s work has appeared in publications, including anthologies of graphic arts in Mexico, the United States and Europe and has also done animation work for MTV, Nickelodeon and Mexican television.

Life Jorge Alderete was born in the town of Santa Cruz, Argentina (Patagonia) in 1971. He is the eldest of three children to a middle-class family and named after his father. His mother was a teacher and his father a state employee. Although born in Santa Cruz, he grew up in a small city called Neuquén, in the province of the same name.

Aldrete received his first comic book/graphic novel before he was able to read and took to them immediately, reading them through his childhood in the 1970s and 1980s. This comic books were not of the superhero kind. In Argentina, they are closer to graphic novels, mostly written for older audiences, based on classic stories and others. This kind of graphic has more prestige in Argentina, with many locally produced and imported from other parts of the Americas and Europe. Popular authors included Alberto Breccia, Hugo Pratt and Corto Maltés. He worked in Argentina for a while but in 1998, he and wife Clarissa Moura, also a designer, decided to live abroad temporarily for the experience. Aldrete's work can be seen in public spaces and publications from Colonia Roma; Mexican, Argentine and Spanish magazines and art galleries in Latin America, the United States, Europe and Africa

After graduating college, he worked for a time as an editor for various independent magazines and comic books, along with mainstream publications Fierro and the Argentine edition of Rolling Stone. Since then, his work has appeared in other specialized anthologies such as Illusive, Pictoplasma, Los Logos series, Latino, Latin American Graphic Design, Place, Kustom Graphics and Play Loud.

In addition to the work he does for clients, Alderete has also opened a number of businesses. In 2006, he opened the Kong Gallery/Store in Colonia Roma with his wife which attracted guests such as which has had guests such as Gary Panter, Ames Brothers, Rinzen, Little Friends of Printmaking and Hula+Hula. In 2009, this enterprise was reopened as Vertigo, a cultural center for workshops, exhibitions, and the sales of shirts, books, music and more. Sonorama covers his relationships with rock bands and compiles twenty years of his work along with music.

Aldrete's work has resulted in a number of various recognitions and invitations. One early one was a prize from the Society for New Design and has been invited to the Toffie Pop Culture Festival and to France's Festival de Cómic de Aix in Provence. In 2010, the Secretary of Culture, Recreation and Sport of Colombia and the El Malpensante magazine chose him as one of the best illustrators of Iberoamerica, to participate in an exhibition that toured for the bicentennial of many Latin American countries that year.

Artistry Aldrete does not distinguish between art and design, and his work is strongly surrealist and kitsch. His graphics lean heavily toward a comic book aesthetic with influences from science fiction, graffiti, horror movies and US underground comics. Julius Wiedemann, (who popularized his work in Illustration now!) defines Alderete's style as "a "pop" style with images of cultural garbage, 1950s science fiction movies, Mexican lucha libre wrestling and surf music in illustrations, animations and psychotropic comics." Aldrete has stated that "kitsch escapes his hand and it's impossible to control." Common elements include Mexico City graffiti, lucha libre, monsters, aliens and 1950s and 1960s glamour symbols. Images have included a mutant with a cigarette and cocktail in a 1960s style scene, soccer player Maradona as an apostle with a burning soccer ball over his heart, a female vampire with a green face, and beehive hairdo, Mao Tse-tung with Mickey Mouse ears.

According to Aldrete, one thing that distinguishes him from other designers in Mexico is that as a foreigner, he can be attracted to elements of Mexican popular culture, such as lucha libre, that others would shun because it is of the lower classes. He had watched lucha libre as a child so when in Mexico he wanted to learn more about it, also interested in its graphic appeal. However, no one wanted to go with him to events when he first came to Mexico, and he began drawing the masks to find out more about the wrestlers and has since incorporated elements of this entertainment into his work.

Ninety five percent of Alderete's work starts out on paper, to be digitalized later and sent as far as England, Norway, the United States and South Africa. The reason for this mixed media is that he began studying his career as digital techniques came to be standard in his field, making his formation half traditional and half digital, for example sketching by hand but doing color management digitally. It is also the reason that he shuns the ubiquitous use of Macs in modern graphic design and instead relies on Corel Draw on PC.