Press release

EDGAR INSUASTY

Presences by Absence. The corn ladder

The land helps us locate the artist (Colombia 1972) and his work. Clay or mud plays a fundamental role, the ground, the soil, is the support where the artist works. During the process, the soil covers parts of the canvas, pigments are poured, and the traces of that subtle presence are fixed, which is intuited by the absence, creating a landscape that is half intentional, half casual.

In the canvases, what remains in front of us is a set of layers of action, where the spectator is unaware of how the matter has been controlled. A flat dematerialised matter, which the canvas absorbs. A canvas that could almost be folded like a flag. A canvas that loses the appearance of a canvas, of a painting. A canvas on which the hand could slide over without encountering even a hurdle or accident.

The brushes have been replaced by ropes, soils, and positive or negative engravings, all for the work to "say" from its very action of not painting but building in a kind of sublimation of craftsmanship that opens up new horizons for the fine arts. And this happens because in his canvases, the subject matter can be dispensable, and the artist resorts more to metaphysics and eurythmy than to the link or interpretation with our surrounding reality, the fruit of the experience of our senses.

The paper used allows the author to apply different qualities and, for being glossy, it seems like he was working on a marble surface. The process is similar to that with the fabrics: to put on and take off, apply and polish, and summarize until reaching the essence of the unknown but suggestive. It is remarkable in these papers the magnificent and diverse qualities that the graphite produces, from the brightest, drawing and incisive to those that seem to produce the effect of a collage of finely laminated metals.

Julio Criado.