Arising from the exhibition ‘Poemas’ (Poems) shown in Hong Kong and published in the Catalogue ‘Entre Nubes de Polvo’ (‘Amongst Clouds of Dust’) for the Fernado Silio Gallery.
Q: You have on several occasions demonstrated the existence of connections between your pictorial work and poetry. How are those connections established?
A: The truth is that I treat poetry in a very anarchic way. What I find interesting about poems is their capacity to offer responses to my emotions. As soon as I adapt and mix pieces of them, whilst always maintaining an absolute respect for them, I transform them. And it’s only then, when I begin to feel them as my own, that the phenomenon ‘Talking with Images’ is produced, and that is part of the purpose of my paintings...to transmit...to communicate....to suggest.
Q: If, as Vicen and other poets have suggested, the origin of the poetic word is silence, that which cannot be said, should one interpret your paintings as more of a process or journey rather than a point of destination?
A: Absolutely....if we accept that....’painting is born at the frontier of the failure of words’ (E.Trias). Wirgesstein studied the problems inherent in language for communication and its erroneous interpretation, which at times results from an excess of precision. When the subject of communication isn’t scientific but humanistic it becomes necessary to obtain a sonorous ‘silence’, that is to say, a field in which the implied is more important than the affirmed. The viewer would have to receive sufficient stimulus in order to start moving and simultaneously discover their own discourse. I aim with my painting to give ‘an initial push’, to open the doors to personal exploration of the inner self. It’s the process itself that interests me. The final destination isn’t in my hands, but in those of the viewer.
Q: Would it be possible to connect the processal character of your paintings with a vision of life as a journey?
A: Well, life as a journey....I don’t know about that, perhaps something closer to life as the consequence of an accumulation of situations. I paint in layers. I create an image onto which I superimpose another image and then another which each time is erased and diffused by the final layer. I have always had the feeling that life is exactly like that. A succession of unforeseeable events that we form layer by layer. For this reason the reccurant theme of memory and its relics is so central to my work. Infact there is an entire series, ‘Amongst Clouds of Dust’ that arose from the image of the destruction of the Twin Towers. At the end, only the immense cloud of dust was discernibly real. The memory had been destroyed and had to be recontructed with the imagination. This process is a journey of some kind, but of course it’s not along a lineal path but instead a ‘footstep on top of a footstep’ (S.Herraiz).
Q: What symbolises the open and locked doors along this path?
A: The language that I use is symbolic. The door is not only the door of destiny. It is also that untangible point, that ‘non-place’ from where to start the journey along the path to one’s inner self. The doors open, close and also define limits and boundaries. They’re a frequently used symbol in literature and as a matter of fact I often accompany my work with phrases in which references are made to them. Another theme that interests me is that of the look or gaze. Our own gaze and that of others. What we look at and that which looks at us. Actually my locks don’t close, don’t have a key. But, as a disciple of Baudelaire, they urge towards ‘voyeurism’.
Q: If the door is an opening which leads to further away, to the unknown, and, as you have already said on one occasion, that the power of pictorial language resides in its capacity to activate the mechanisms of the imagination, is this all about leading the viewer to the edge of the abyss?
A: There are many realities. There are the everyday realities that we live day by day, and those unique realities, that we feel and live during very special moments. John Berger says that what we look for in art is the secret about ourselves, and Baudelaire defines the artist as ‘the voice in the world leading to understanding’. In this way, I sincerely hope that the viewer of my art, at some moment, confronts their most profound realities.
Q: Could it be said that the irons that you add to your paintings, operate as retainers, as fastenings to this side, to the here and now, as a bond that prevents the final fall into the bottomless abyss?
A: Yes. Iron is the material, the reality that physically fixes the colour and protects the painting as well as metaphorically underpinning our dreams.
Q: What role do objects preceding from other cultures play in your work? Do they maintain any relation with the boundary symbolised by the door?
A: The objects originating from other cultures which I appropriate are not causal. They all have a symbolism that is spiritual in origin, but what I find especially interesting is to take them out of context. I have discovered that they don’t lose their ‘magical’ quality by not knowing their exact meaning. It is precisely their ‘unreality’, their occultism, that permits their recreation in a new discourse.
Q: And the written word? Why does it make an appearance to accompany the artistic visual image?
A: In order to highlight the interplay of the Dual Self and the burden of contradictory conflicting emotions that we carry inside. The written words refer to our culture, to that which we know, but the fact that they are almost erased, impossible to read more than in parts, obliges us to complete them with memory and imagination and makes us feel free to create our own reality. They are, once again, silent cries.