A hint of Warhol left wanting more

January 22, 2014

Art critique in UC and Animal
WALDEMAR SOMMER

The object as a protagonist, portraits as objects: fundamental subject matter which Andy Warhol (1928-1987) chose throughout his life. We can appreciate it in the small and educative set that the Extension Center of Universidad Católica is dedicting to the American in its main hall. The second space from the same institution, excellent initiative, offers silkscreen classes to children, technique preferred by the most radical authors of pop art. From his vast work as a decorator, designer, painter, printmaker and filmmaker, some screen print works are presented. They belong to his typical plot series. One of them, from 1976, portrays domestic pets: three dogs and an acrylic cat, with unexpected texture and printing ink on canvas. The expressive contrast between the tenderness of the cocker spaniel and the intensity with which the cat stalks enchants. From 1981 belong some cartons with diamond dust from the series “Myths”, where three serigraphs specially stand out. One is led by “Mickey Mouse”. A notable figurative synthesis of repeated contours, with white, black, gray, touches of pink and red on a background whose dazzling brilliance is reminiscent of the diamond lights of Hollywood cinema. There are also “Superman” duplicates, overlapping and in flight, and beautiful self-portrait –“The Shadow”- that plays, insinuatingly, with the face and the shadow of the artist’s profile.

Art in 2007: Poor in the outside, rich in the inside.

January 22, 2014

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Artes y Letras, EL MERCURIO.
Waldemar Sommer.

With respect to the traditionally poor quality of foreign exhibitions – it seems like our Los Andes mountain stops them-, the year that just ended did not get better. Only four with unique artworks result worth talking about. In first place, the work from the great sculpture artist, a contemporary British, Tony Cragg. His fantastic metamorphosis of the object deserved our award Premio Del Circulo de Criticos de Arte. Other valuable visits were, on the other hand, glances to the past: the Spanish archeological pieces and Russian icons from the XV to the XVIII century. Let’s add the actual Korean art sample, heading by the hurtful men of Dangwood Lee and for the video around the dollar, of Joonho Jeon. The rest of the more attractive visitant groups limited themselves to multiple edition work: the excellent homage to Picasso –printings of the best artists of the XX century-, the two actual German photography groups-Höfer, Polke, the Beckers, etc.-, the Suisse photographer retrospective-North American Robert Frank. Of Sao Paulo’s Biennial’s uneven selection, we have to highlight Pieter Hugo’s photos and Abdessemet’s videos, from Abdul.

The national ambit did produce various important exhibitions. In sculpture, Francisca Nuñez’s retrospective and delirious botched paintings amazed. Another journey over a decade it’s being dedicated to Marta Colvin. Teresa Gazitua presented herself with recent volumes –stoned metaphor of the Chilean river-, Tatiana Alamos and her exotic culture mix, pretty wooden work from De la Puente, the “cochayuyos” from Lise Moller, Marcela Correa, David Cofré, Javier Arentsen and a new name, Mauricio Garrido, with boxes and an ensemble about E. A. Poe. Read more →

Patricia Claro: Liquid Landscapes

January 22, 2014

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Art District Magazine
By Denis Colson

As soon as I saw the work of the Chilean, Patricia Claro, at Kelley Roy Gallery in Miami’s Wynwood Art District, I was reminded of heated debates about the death of painting, questions as to why produce a realistic painting when photography and digital media are able to capture reality precisely and instantaneously; unconsciously I recalled the controversial topic that has preoccupied artists since the birth of photography at the end of the nineteenth century. Upon closer examination of Claro’s works, which appear to have been created by the lens of a camera, I then thought about recent conversations about so-called “expanded painting,” and how many contemporary artists blur the boundaries between artistic manifestations and move traditional artistic material to different visual supports through the intervention of other disciplines like photography, video and new technology.

Patricia Claro, who considers herself to be a landscape artist, does not attempt to stray from traditional pictorial techniques, nor does she substitute them with digital ones; instead she makes use of the latter during her creative process. With the lens of her camera, she captures unrepeatable static images of landscapes reflected in water, and that reflection is the true protagonist in her enormous canvases.

It all begins with the recording of the reflection on the surface, which can take her hours or entire days during which she travels the lakes by boat, little by little capturing images that later on she deconstructs pixel by pixel to then reconstruct them in her pictorial works. When she stands before the canvas, she first dedicates herself to preparing the background of the painting, creating layers that cancel out the texture of the fabric. In this way she manages to achieve a smooth surface, at the same time that she incorporates the refracted image of the water. The painting is complemented by the reflected image that the artist incorporates through sfumato and a masterly handling of light. It is the wise use of light that causes her paintings to show a certain three-dimensionality, a certain movement; a somewhat changing nature makes them appear more real, as if they were living fragments of the tangible world.

Her works can be appreciated from afar like a hyperrealistic landscape, like those liquid mirrors that we find on the surface of still water. However, as we approach, we start to glimpse a collection of geometric forms that, like the pixels of a digital photograph, shape the image into a whole. The artist has studied the process of perception performed by the human eye, and she has made both the nearby and distant images converge on a 1:1 scale. In this way she causes that set of sensations in which the dialogue between the painting and the public takes place.

Patricia Claro’s liquid landscapes have made me believe that painting will continue to exist in its own right, as long as artists view their surroundings from a contemporary and informed perspective. Her paintings offer a “media-filtered” vision of natural landscapes; this could be no other way because it is through digital media that the contemporary individual today approaches reality. The result is an oeuvre, which is strong, authentic and full of life, an oeuvre that secretly touches the visual repertory of the observer by providing fragments of reality thereby activating the rich archive of images we each carry in our unconscious.

Denise Colson is a freelance art critic based in Miami.

TIME AND RIVERS DON’T FLOW BACK

January 13, 2014

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María Olga Giménez. Bachelor in Arts and Literature.

Time and rivers don’t flow back is the title of Patricia Claro’s second solo exhibition at Animal Gallery. This collection is the fruit of a study about water and it’s characteristics where rigorous observation of reality has given the artist more insight about the natural laws that determine the particular properties of this element.

In conjunction with the aforesaid, the artist conducts a study on the concept of time, in which she explores the internal mechanism that allows water to flow permanently. The video is a complement to the pictorial representation and a synthesis of this study. It demonstrates a variation of light intensity throughout the day, revealing a series of changes that water experiences in its natural setting. The sequence of images uninterruptedly delivered by the river evokes the idea of infinity, as water continues to reflect and mirror, going beyond the limits of the framing and temporality of the chosen captions. This temporality (which represents a non-existing instant at present time), contrasts with the idea of the eternal flow of water and is the substratum of the author’s reflexion with respect to time. The artist’s strategy starts from filming from a fixed angle that is manipulated through flipping, direction change and synchronized clips, among others. The objective is to recreate the presence of the river in the most vivid possible way. The video is a mise en scene of the river as the origin of the paintings.

The idea of time present in the videos as well as in the pictorial sequence connects with the theory of Heraclitus where movement is considered as the characteristic phenomenon of all that exists. The famous saying “no one bathes twice in the same river, extracted from the work of this pre-Socratic philosopher, alludes to the changing condition of all reality, starting from anything defined in a particular space and time, and mutating in accordance to the changing process of both factors. Heraclitus uses the image of a river to represent the temporary nature of reality, the river being the best proof to the passing of time and the singleness of every lived instant. This paradigm supports the title of the exhibition. The evanescence of the mirrored images in the water with its unique and unrepeatable character grants a sort of sacredness to the piece of river chosen by the artist, for one is facing a scene that only occurs in that time-space and exists only once. Finally it is the river that determines and dictates the images appearing in the paintings.

The collection is a sequence of images of the same portion of water. The images are only fractions of a minute away from each other, thus giving continuance to the presentation. The span of the sequence encloses only 8 seconds, enough time for a wave to expand and disappear. A variation in the intensity of light is added to this representation of movement in water, simulating sunlight throughout the day, and revealing the transparency of water and its ability to mirror all that surrounds it.

This work is made possible due to the interrelation between nature and technique as part of Claro’s internal creative process. The predictable- represented by the digital caption- converges with the unpredictable and random- the water in its natural setting-, forming a triad: nature-technique-painting. The use of contemporary technology points out to the presence of a versatile studio, where thoroughness and deliberation of manual work intertwines with efficacy and arbitrariness of the technique, building a system that defines her particular style.

To fully understand the creation of the artist, one has to go back to the setting where the work originated. Instant photography is the result of a detailed and accurate monitoring of every transformation process that happens in nature, where the artist is witness to water cycles as seasons change. This constant rigorous observation shows the author’s personal adaptation to the rhythm of the river as the source of her images as she is subject to its changes in order to make an accurate representation of reality. Being a witness to the process of change in water according to its particular time and adjusting to it, year after year, is a testimony of the nobility of her creative process. It resembles the selflessness and generosity of water reflecting everything around it.

The adaptation of the artist to different rhythms and cycles of nature grants her style a kind of uniqueness marked by the presence of different times throughout the process. The first time corresponds to nature itself, the stage from which the image is captured to be used as the basis of the pictorial image. With the second time a creating process begins, where the rhythm depends on the quality of the material used and the sophistication of the techniques used by the artist to approach figuration by cutting. Both times imply the artist’s diligence, calmness, and submission. This patient attitude which corresponds to her personal rhythm joins nature’s (rhythm) in order to capture and represent each image. The rhythms of water cannot be intervened; neither can the rhythm of painting and the creative process.

The artist’s patient attitude throughout the process resembles the internal disposition suggested in Tao Teh King or the Taoist book of wisdom. The book states that contemplating nature is one of the ways which leads to the path of knowledge.

According to this, it is possible to establish certain links between Claro’s style and the oriental principles of aesthetics. One of them is the way she deals with her object of study as she implies a depersonalization in order to assimilate and internalize the timing of nature. It is the only possible way for her to inspect and perceive the particular characteristics of water: it’s lack of identity, it’s formlessness, it’s lack of color and it’s transparency; identifying it as a “sounding solitude”[2].

“By not being we can contemplate on the essence. By being, we only see

the appearance.”[3]

This quote from the Taoist text draws allusion to the existing opposition between movement and stillness. It expresses that contemplation of reality is possible by not-being while only seeing the appearance is product of being. The message of the Taoist book is a description of a way of life that allows contemplation of reality and therefore guaranteeing the knowing of truth. The essence of reality is identified with Tao, which contains as well as sustains all that exist in the world we perceive. It is Tao’s embodying characteristic that makes it similar to water with its ability to contain the landscape- from the sky to the earth- , and at the same time mirroring it with fidelity and detachment (As shown in the paintings of the artist). This feature of water is present in Patricia Claro’s work, whence it is possible to understand the idea of Taoist emptiness.

“The highest goodness, water-like,

Does good to everything and goes

Unmurmuring to places men despise;

But so, is close in nature to the Tao”[4]

The identification between Tao and the concept of emptiness leads to a search about the dialectic between water and the environment, where the image is a product of the reflection of light waves that bounce from the exterior surface. Water needs the tree to be seen because it cannot do so all by itself.

Understanding and studying the emptiness as well as differentiating its common meaning from the Taoist acceptation of the term, has been a substantial support in the development of the artist’s creative journey, particularly in its conceptual aspect and theoretical framework. To perceive water as an absence which is also infinite and undefined presence of new images has allowed her to use the concept of emptiness as a strategy to conceive the work.

Another point where the aesthetics of the artist and the oriental meet is evident in the use of paper-cutting for the construction of light filters which is an ancient technique in China dating back to 200 B.C. It consisted of using small scissors and chisels to cut paper. The final work was hung from the windows to filter the light entering. There is a drawing technique that is called “paper cutting” or “ Jianzhi”. This technique is referred to the way Claro proceeds with the drawing, as she creates the effect of light in the painting through a light-defining cut resembling a “chiseled mask”. The cutting of paper-done with laser technology, grades the intensity of light over the surface. This “handmade” light gives the image dynamism, as it creates a sense of movement similar to the waves produced by the currents. Every piece without a mask is a window that lets in beams and photons transformed into pictorial material. They define the image and give rise to the distorted reflections of the surrounding, which in turn reveals what there is in the exterior.

It’s essential to point out that Claro’s study about the quality of water is related to the biodynamic research done by Rudolph Steiner. The study focuses on water, as a living organism, and its characteristics in relation to the environment and the system it is part of. As the artist’s work of demonstrates the behavior of water in response to certain climatic, geographic and seasonal conditions, among other factors, it places it amongst hydrographic works of the planet and its ecosystem. Water chosen by the artist-as the basis of her work- is part of only 1% of the entire world’s water (the percentage of Sweetwater which is not frozen as glaciers, nor is groundwater)[5]. Therefore it is a rescue mission to do a study focused on the fugacity of time and its relationship to the water’s mirroring images. It draws the attention of the spectator in an attempt to change his view about this portion of water in extinction and its particular beauty.

1. El título de la exposición está inspirado en la novela de Yasunari Kawabata titulada Lo Bello y lo Triste. Emecé editores, Buenos Aires. 8va ed. P. 119.

2. Luis Racionero, Textos de Estética Taoísta. Editorial Alianza: Madrid, 1999. P. 52.

3. Lao Tse, Tao Teh King. Editorial Sirio: Buenos Aires, 2004. P. 11.

4. Ibid. P. 25

5. Fuente: National Academy of Sciences. Washington, DC. September 2011.

When realism suggests

December 28, 2008

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Arts and Letters
Sunday December 28, 2008

Patricia Claro y Ricardo Maffei:

WALDEMAR SOMMER

Amongst ourselves we frequently don’t trust the realisms of the present age. There are several reasons for this that are worthy of consideration. These vary from the lack of synthesis, responsible for the boring accumulation of details, to the grave subordination of the formal narrative values. All this is translated to the inability of suggestions and the excess of evidence. Luckily, we can count with a few painters loyal to a recognizable reality. They are able to transcend it with valid insinuations. Two of them, completely different from one another, are being exhibited during these days. One is in at the beginning of her trajectory while the other is in the middle of his production.

Let’s start with the first one. She depicts the calm and flow of waters with its lights and shadows, brightness and transparencies, with reflections of its surroundings. This is the genuine theme of Patricia Claro which is now being shown in Galería Animal. It is reduced to nine big paintings and one great horizontal triptych. There is also a video with a very adequate sonorous support whose notes are prolonged in different planes and where the sound of water welds with electronic music.
In the ways of impressionists, an affectionate study of aquatic nature appears in these oil paintings on fabric. Sometimes, the placid and watery blue surfaces, with touches of green and black, pick up the surrounding leafy vegetation and makes it its own. It also adds its own tones of green, ocher and orange. They probably capture de most beautiful examples of the exhibition.
On the other hand, Ricardo Maffei shows recent pastels on paper (2004-08) in the Galería A.M. Malborough. If before he drew attention by his small cup of color over wrinkled paper theme, now he undertakes seven developments over that argument, making it richer. Now, the round hard object lies over cloth and over marble. He sometimes confronts a crushing machine or a glass of water.

Other characters of his are the morbid superposed fabrics where the exquisite sensuality of the diagonal folds seems to talk to the extended quilts in a game of horizontals and verticals, of straight and curved lines and of false contrasts in the material. With this, the present still life transcends the anecdote through an effective reinforcement of the plastic ingredient. Maffei also stands out in two other aspects. Unlike the most famous realist Chilean painter, we have his impeccable administration of cuts and limits of each one of his frontal visions.

As far as color goes, his chromatic accords always emerge extremely beautiful with confrontations of complementary colors, especially of yellow and violet or violet blues. At the same time, his evocative backgrounds stand out rich with enigmatic signs, stripes and spots which introduce certain instability to the certainty of the protagonist cloth. Despite all this, the painter has never before shown a greater genuineness or visual lightness in his themes.

KEYS: Pause in the subordination that the narrative ingredients suffer, so detrimental to realism, in the hands of Claro and Maffei, managing this way to prevail the aquatic lyricism en the first one and the elegance of forms in the second.

Images in Transit, Static Paintings

September 1, 2007

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By Joaquín Cociña

“I am writing, certainly, without having seen the exhibition, composing a text out of bits of the project, the photos, the conversations; maybe writing this is a little like writing fantastic literature. In any case, it’s an exercise to open a conversation about the exhibition”1.

Writing about the work En Tránsito had me troubled, but I got out thanks to that brief text from Adriana Valdés. I only had seen “live” some of the participant’s artworks. The majority had come to me attached, compressed, mediated in its most radical and semi-private term: e-mail.

The ones who study Art in South America and take Occidental Art History courses, receive an education based on different types of lighting projections one after another, while a professor explains the materiality of Rembrandt’s paintings, the North American painting dimensions in the 60’s… And where a Lucian Freud of 40 x 70 cm and 2 cm of depth, becomes a 200 x 230 cm image without a thickness.

Being sorry is inoperative. The point is that for an art student, historic paintings are projected files, but for that same student and future artist, the act of painting is a material job, like all pictorial acts.

That fact that painting has turned to photography and the mediated images has not resolved the problem. That which Benjamín called aura –term over chewed on, but inevitably ductile- shows us that the paintings we seem to appreciate are far away, a lot farther than our computer screens. What we see is residual, a radicalization of the copy and original problems. To doubt if there’s an original or not doesn’t work very much, it gives freedom sensations, but overwhelms.

In a past exhibition, while I was hanging a series of drawings, the local guard said to me: “…the photos are pretty”. As I explained to him that they were drawings and not photos, he asked me: “And how long did it take you to make the photos?”. I then understood that for him, a photo is not an analog or digital photosensible print, but an image that corresponds to a certain type. A blurred line separates the different types of images that are produced and perceived. Then, in that indetermination, it is worth asking which the space in where painting plays in is.

En Tránsito is a painting exhibition. It’s not a version or a rereading, the artworks present themselves as traditional paintings. But it’s the treatment and the references that make them to group in a problematic manner. The works have photography and other images as a reference, but also they have the immanent presence of the relationship between copy and original, merged in an affective bond of the image.

The artists of En Tránsito know that the images are coded, they know that it’s not the same to pretend to paint “what it’s seen” than painting absorbing elements of other codes, but their paintings face their references affectively. Barthes would probably be happy, but would say that those paintings have lost their punctum. On the other hand, Gerhard Ritcher once said that he painted based on photos to give these last ones a sense and direction. What’s left? A confusion. And in that confusion between the original and copy, between reference, image and surface, between coldness and affection, it can be talked about a transit between different points. But that confusion, where a no less confused painting is inserted, has a clear ending point: an exhibition that’s attended, where the old movement of confronting the paintings and seeing them live is produced, with all the material aspects that are blurred as they are formatted. Maybe that’s the space in which painting plays: the physical space, concrete and performative in which the artworks are set to be seen.

Finally, a last question without an answer. We should remember –How to forget it?- that these paintings are South American, people located in a place where there’s not precisely a lack of limits and definitions that can be celebrated as a post modern achievement. If the problem or the situation is the blurred line and the transit between the images and the similarity, the not central role of Latin American painters cannot be ignored. The action of painting is already a weird assimilation, taken out of proportion (as Valdés would say). But –and not as an answer, but as an escape route- that problem of uncertainty is present, as it’s already said, in the artistic education. If taking this as a virtue is irresponsibility, ignoring it is even worse.

GAZING UPON THE LANDSCAPE

July 15, 2007

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Artes y Letras. EL MERCURIO.

Art Critique
Chiuminatto, Concha and Claro:
Waldemar Sommer

A typical pictorial theme, landscapes, has been interpreted in three different
ways by two female artists, in “Instituto Cultural de Las Condes”, and by a male artist
with trajectory, in “Sala Gasco”. This last painter mentioned, Pablo Chiuminatto, shows
new perspectives of an argument to which he has maintained himself loyal to. Read more →