Volviendo al pensamiento a.
Nostalgia reigns in a world without a future. In the beginning there were Adam and Eve. Then, the apple and the punishment. This world is a wheel that never stops turning. The past covers the ideas that no one wanted to discover. All time accelerates without reaching anywhere, But something must be done, something must be produced.
Persecute those people who do not reproduce, while we worship grains that are grown without the need to plant them in the ground. What is the danger to combat?
Technical, aesthetic and conceptual development
The work “Returning to Thought a.” It was created based on the painting “Around the thought of, No. 2” (1964) from the homonymous series by Ernesto Deira. In this series, Deira was interested in semiological questions: what precedes the word, what is below the verb, before coming to the surface and becoming a sign. Regarding this work, Felipe Noé mentioned that it alludes “to the origin, to the primordial moment where words and names exist before they take shape in the consciousness of the subject.”
The art of the global North in the 20th century was characterized by what Fricke called the “abandonment of painting.” The invention of photography fueled the curiosity of artists to investigate new means of production. The decades that followed were marked by a strong exploration of the “I”, both in politics and in art. The presence of the human body as a field of research and a medium in itself was notable. Meanwhile, in the South, Deira formed the group “La Nueva Figuración” together with Noé, Macció and De La Vega. Propelled by the militant avant-garde of the 60s, they saw in their backstage the most fertile space for protest. They proposed a new way of understanding figurative painting, focusing on the materiality and intention of the strokes.
In the work that is now presented as a canvas there is no face, no mirrors, no videos or games of light. There are no people. Just stains and strokes. Intentions. There is an investigation into the body, but not in an obvious way. It is the lines, shapes and colors that refer to a subject.
César Aira states about contemporary art: ”(…) we are no longer at the origin; perhaps we are at the end. Except that in our craft the end, or the purpose, consists of reaching the origin. And any origin is good, if it serves.”
I never knew my grandfather Ernesto. I try to piece together his trace in my memory, and I only see pictures. Drawings. Stains. Some lost photo perhaps. Never a material body. Always colored fillings on canvas.
If I have to bet on an origin, it is perhaps the search. The mystery of being a human, which may not be carrying a body, but rather building it with purpose. The strangeness of feeling close to a man whose existence I cannot prove. There is no point in going to unknown places if the same body with the same ideas lives inside me. That’s why I propose playing with the first thing I knew how to do: draw.
In the upper left corner of the canvas there is a selection of colors from the color palette of the same work. I invite you to press one of the buttons, select a color and paint. You can change or delete it by clicking on the white square in the lower right corner.
Literature
AIRA, César (2010) Sobre el arte contemporáneo - Editorial Grijalbo-Mondadori FRICKE, Christiane (1999) Nuevos Medios - Taschen Reflexiones sobre “En torno al Pensamiento A” de Ernesto Deira | Galería Jacques Martínez