A continual metamorphosis: from “Body” to “Sedimentations”.

THE SERIES

When I paint I let things happen and then afterwards take a step back, distance myself and understand what I have done. Both these moments are part of my way of painting. Titles of the Series are attributed by objectively trying to observe the things in front of me as something that is suddenly revealed before my eyes. The terms used often appear to be words that are used to define spaces: architectural space, physical space, psychological space, symbolic space and emotional space. Sometimes it is two-dimensional and sometimes it is three-dimensional. In some cases it is as though it corresponded to me, to my body, and in others it is the space containing me, and in others still it is something that I look at from outside of myself. It is as though on the one hand it were an interior mental body, and on the other an objective body, but this movement is never so clear and defined. It is like looking at a body from all its viewpoints: from the side, from the front, from outside, from within, from above, from close up, from a distance... Sometimes the parts break up like pieces in a kaleidoscope. Basically, it is as though the body were a tool for measuring reality and time.

BODY (1981-1982)

At first when I started painting, the root of everything was my body as the tool of awareness and experimentation. At first the body’s direct actions completely manipulate the substance:  crumpling, tearing, scratching, chewing, licking...

Then the entire body’s movement leaves a trace of its passing on the surface. I use it like a brush. I don’t look. I touch. After a period in which the body itself is the painting tool and in which the eye, one’s vision, does not enter into the creative process, I began to understand that looking becomes part of the painting practice. Vision becomes the means for knowing and for understanding.

GESTURES (1981-1982)

Metaphorically I begin to pull the skin from my body and position it in front of me. A relationship, a dialogue, with the frontal pictorial space is born. The works that belong to this series are signs left by the movements of my hand, my arm and my wrist. I try to understand what the relationship is between the space – the frontal, two-dimensional space of the painting – and me. Then I began to move my wrist. I try to situate myself, to find a position in the space. I project single gestures that slowly superimpose each other and complicate the space. These gestures begin to define a concentric space: vortexes that lead towards the centre of the space.

CENTRALITY (1985-1998)

A rectangle placed obliquely at the centre, which covers the previous gestures. A repositioning, a reaffirmation; a transfer to the centre; a return to a central position.

SLIDING (1982-1990)

It is a sliding that exits, which precipitates outside of the pictorial space. The gesture goes beyond the limits of the frame of the painting like a waterfall or jet of water. A rectangle placed at the centre obliquely that covers the previous gestures. The Sliding springs from a triangular figure, an upside-down isosceles triangle which slides towards one side and shifts all the weight towards one side of the surface. It is an unbalancing, a removal of balance at the centre. It leads to movement. It makes the composition slide from the centre towards a lower point. The shift always remains contained within the pictorial space.

VORTEXES (1986-1991)

It is a space that closes in on itself. There is a gestural nature that leads towards the centre of the painting, a centripetal movement: a vortex. The Gestures are always closed on four sides. The vortex takes us inside the pictorial space.

APPROACHES (1985-1990)

It is an approach to the gesture of the painting, as though I had put my face close to the wall and looked at a detail. It is a partial view of the space, like magnified details.

DOMES (1986-1994)

Circles, tondos, circular spaces, hollows. The cupola seen from within, a red concave space that contains. As though it were the inside of the body without the bones. After only painting with red for a long time and after having realised that it was like painting the interior of my body and defining an interior and concave space, I decided to investigate another kind of space that had this type of connotation: the interior of architectural cupolas. 

INTERIOR (1998-1993)

It is a red internal space. A space has been carved out and is situated inside an interior place.

WALLS (1988-1991)

The internal and concave space closes in on itself. The walls are so close that the edges can no longer be made out. There is no longer a perspective, we find ourselves face to face with a detail of the wall that delimits it. It is as though I had got so close to the substance that I can no longer see the form. It is as though there is a membrane, a skin that separates an external space from an internal one, a wall that obstructs, a block, a covering, a brake that stops us from looking beyond.

CUTS (1993-1994)

From inside to out. It is as though I had used the brush like a knife. I escape through the wall with a cut, a laceration of the membrane of separation. It is a fissure through which I depart.

OPENING (1993-1995)

After the previous period marked by a movement of digging, of investigating a closed space, I leave with these apertures. A narrow opening, a fissure, a gash, a door, a window has opened. At times it is like looking at it from inside and at others it is like looking at it from outside.

CROSS (1995-1997)

These works were created shortly after my father’s death. A space cut in half both horizontally and vertically. Two parts, two gestures, two lines, two areas of colour that cross over each other and which, when placed transversely, define separate spaces.

PRESENCE (1995-2000)

It is the arrival of a new element. Leaving the internal spaces I am now outside. New presences, figures, rectangles and characters appear outside. They can be alone, in twos, threes or more.

SUPERIMPOSITIONS (1998-2006)

These presences gradually begin to cover each other, to straddle each other until they eventually began to spread to the limits of the painting’s space. Only the top part shows what lies beneath. Gradually this space widens, expands and imposes itself almost totally on the surface pushing towards the top horizontal line, leaving an opening of just a centimetre. This is where the “Sedimentations” begin.

IN TWO PARTS (2000-2008)

A painting painted at two different times: the first part years before and then, after a long time, it is taken up again and the stratification starts over. It is as though a painting is never finished. Its conclusion is precarious. It is possible to start working on it again and transform it at any time.

SEDIMENTATIONS (2003-…)

The gesture is always the same: spreading fluid substance on a two-dimensional surface until I’ve covered almost all of it, but not completely. The process declares itself: at the top there is a border that recounts the passage of all the colours that have led me to that last layer. Each “Sedimentation” is like the fragment of a painting that develops over time and that is painted infinitely.

(Written in 2013)