L'Ange Volant, Garches, Paris, France, 2020
V i l l a L ' A n g e V o l a n t - G i o P o n t i
T e m p s e t I n s t a n t
T e m p s e t I n s t a n t
TEMPS ET INSTANT
Villa L'Ange Volant, Gio Ponti
Garches, Paris, France, 2020
Villa L'Ange Volant, Gio Ponti
Garches, Paris, France, 2020
The Suspended Universe of Ignacio Valdes
Do shadows have colour? According to the Impressionists and Neo-Impressionists, without a doubt. We have to think that Ignacio Valdes shares this opinion, as his silhouettes, without thickness, almost transparent, seem to emerge from pastel coloured clouds, even though the canvases are executed in oil. Still as shadows these open forms that blur and fuse, avoid the contour that circumscribes, the line that encircles. With an aura of silence and mystery, they indicate more than they show, suggest more than they narrate.
And yet, the gaze seeks to uncover content within these light sketches that evaporate before their recital, in these representations that slide towards the vaporous. An understandable effort, because Valdes evidently does not practice abstraction, but an interlude rich in possibilities, preserved by an immaterial testimony of the real. The artist has the rare gift of inventing unknown and suggestive forms, condensed expressions of a personal poetry. We speculate on stories without stories, scraps of almost nothing, narrations without a narrator. So, here and there, we meet a character in movement – (Pinky, 2019) a couple in movement – a dance? (Round and Round, 2019), - a horse (Ad Portas, 2018).
Elsewhere, there are luminous flashes which cross the canvas. Further on, forms that refuse language, with indefinite and trembling features, submitted to the spectator who, in turn, will give them their name.
However, virtually all of these figures seem not to touch the ground, to be suspended in fluctuating space, to float at the mercy of the slightest breath of air (A l’aube, 2020).
Placed on a backdrop made up of zones of patched colour, which advance or retreat, they form a field of uncertainty where the authority of the gaze gives way to the trial and error of the eye. Scattered fragments which rise in the middle of an indefinite space, without a horizon, they are like reflections of wandering clouds whose configuration changes at every moment.
Faced with these constellations that escape any material contingency, one could speak of residues of visions, more turned towards apparitions than appearance. Terrains vagues for deambulating, reality translated into signs without code, places of the imagination, the paintings of Valdes stage a choreography of instability. Away from the dictates of modernity, while conscious of them, the artist has chosen a singular path, breaking from any school or tendency. His works inform us of nothing, other than their own existence, their delicacy, their vulnerability. In the final instance, if the work revendicates anything, it is its fragility.
© ITZHAK GOLDBERG
Paris, September 2020
Do shadows have colour? According to the Impressionists and Neo-Impressionists, without a doubt. We have to think that Ignacio Valdes shares this opinion, as his silhouettes, without thickness, almost transparent, seem to emerge from pastel coloured clouds, even though the canvases are executed in oil. Still as shadows these open forms that blur and fuse, avoid the contour that circumscribes, the line that encircles. With an aura of silence and mystery, they indicate more than they show, suggest more than they narrate.
And yet, the gaze seeks to uncover content within these light sketches that evaporate before their recital, in these representations that slide towards the vaporous. An understandable effort, because Valdes evidently does not practice abstraction, but an interlude rich in possibilities, preserved by an immaterial testimony of the real. The artist has the rare gift of inventing unknown and suggestive forms, condensed expressions of a personal poetry. We speculate on stories without stories, scraps of almost nothing, narrations without a narrator. So, here and there, we meet a character in movement – (Pinky, 2019) a couple in movement – a dance? (Round and Round, 2019), - a horse (Ad Portas, 2018).
Elsewhere, there are luminous flashes which cross the canvas. Further on, forms that refuse language, with indefinite and trembling features, submitted to the spectator who, in turn, will give them their name.
However, virtually all of these figures seem not to touch the ground, to be suspended in fluctuating space, to float at the mercy of the slightest breath of air (A l’aube, 2020).
Placed on a backdrop made up of zones of patched colour, which advance or retreat, they form a field of uncertainty where the authority of the gaze gives way to the trial and error of the eye. Scattered fragments which rise in the middle of an indefinite space, without a horizon, they are like reflections of wandering clouds whose configuration changes at every moment.
Faced with these constellations that escape any material contingency, one could speak of residues of visions, more turned towards apparitions than appearance. Terrains vagues for deambulating, reality translated into signs without code, places of the imagination, the paintings of Valdes stage a choreography of instability. Away from the dictates of modernity, while conscious of them, the artist has chosen a singular path, breaking from any school or tendency. His works inform us of nothing, other than their own existence, their delicacy, their vulnerability. In the final instance, if the work revendicates anything, it is its fragility.
© ITZHAK GOLDBERG
Paris, September 2020