'Essays in idleness 9/10 – THE CLOVEN COUNT' by Giles Prince
Essays in idleness 9/10 – THE CLOVEN COUNT
La Fontaine Centre of Contemporary Art, Manama, Bahrain, 2005
by Giles Prince
‘only the ridiculous survive…’
I have often thought it futile to question artists about their work. Surely, they are the last to know what it is all about?
It seems to me, (others will naturally see this differently), that the figures that inhabit the space of these canvases of Ignacio Valdes are in some sort of mute predicament.
They are usually wearing some ludicrous badge of office, of some unknown civilization, some costume which distinguishes them from ordinary beings. They are figures, lost kings and queens of imaginary empires, floating or falling or crooked, but always trapped on the stage of the canvas, trapped and weighed down also by their apparel, which hangs on them like chest-fulls of medals hang on high officials, officiating over lost kingdoms.
Pitiable figures, they are at the same time dignified at a moment in their place in history. Their rich vestments, like those of the monstrous, comical Ubu Roi, of the French poet Jarry; magnificent, comical, vain-glorious.
This is a bestiary to which Ignacio has been adding over years. These images of beings seem to come from an archaic time when humans were hardly differentiated from the animals they hunted. They are like characters, joined through their costume, with their spirit-beings.
On the canvas, these figures become fused with their environments, limbs can become detached from their bodies, and hurtle through the air like meteors. In Ignacio’s small bronzes, this fusion takes place by a different method. Wax images are joined and pressed together in the way that sedimentary rock presses the remains of countless sea creatures into limestone, and then into marble. In a final stage of improvisation the completed wax brutally bent into a new shape (the broken lines appears frequently in both his canvases and sculptures). Transferred into bronze this gesture takes on greater violence, greater strength. These are baroque gestures, but snapped and bent.
Sculpture can have its own problem, or rather its own grain or property; the fusion of sentiment, figure, environment and action, into something often seen in the round.
Momentarily futurist artists at the beginning of the century, with varying degrees of success, made composites of situations, in what they called Simultaneity. Titles of these pieces such as Car+Speed+Light, (G.Balla, 1913), make an intention clear. Futurism was referred to disparagingly as accelerated cubism, yet one could see here a kind of fusion of all of the dimensions of a situation, which were torn apart later; between the sub-conscious excavations of Surrealism, and the dry formality of later Cubism. There is a coming together of these dimensions here, and this is particularly interesting when seen in these bronzes of Valdes.
Like musical improvisors, I think Ignacio listens to his materials for a sort of echo of the notes he strikes, and constantly responds in a kind of constant reciprocation. The new drawings executed in oil on skiddy paper, seek out images in the drips and slides of the paint, always imposing the same search for figure/situation fusion.
We bring to these paintings what we like, but let us say that the artist is often no fool. I myself see in this particular strange one legged, vermillion-robed figure; the Cloven Count, one of My Ancestors by Calvino. A ludicrous story of a count divided entirely in two by an enormous sword blow during battle; the two halves live on to battle out separately vain-glorious existences, eventually reunited in a final battle out separately vain-glorious existences, eventually reunited in a final battle for domination between themselves.
Exhibition catalogue, 'Paintings, Sculptures and Drawings'
La Fontaine Centre of Contemporary Art
Manama, Bahrain, March 2005
© GILES PRINCE, London 2005
La Fontaine Centre of Contemporary Art, Manama, Bahrain, 2005
by Giles Prince
‘only the ridiculous survive…’
I have often thought it futile to question artists about their work. Surely, they are the last to know what it is all about?
It seems to me, (others will naturally see this differently), that the figures that inhabit the space of these canvases of Ignacio Valdes are in some sort of mute predicament.
They are usually wearing some ludicrous badge of office, of some unknown civilization, some costume which distinguishes them from ordinary beings. They are figures, lost kings and queens of imaginary empires, floating or falling or crooked, but always trapped on the stage of the canvas, trapped and weighed down also by their apparel, which hangs on them like chest-fulls of medals hang on high officials, officiating over lost kingdoms.
Pitiable figures, they are at the same time dignified at a moment in their place in history. Their rich vestments, like those of the monstrous, comical Ubu Roi, of the French poet Jarry; magnificent, comical, vain-glorious.
This is a bestiary to which Ignacio has been adding over years. These images of beings seem to come from an archaic time when humans were hardly differentiated from the animals they hunted. They are like characters, joined through their costume, with their spirit-beings.
On the canvas, these figures become fused with their environments, limbs can become detached from their bodies, and hurtle through the air like meteors. In Ignacio’s small bronzes, this fusion takes place by a different method. Wax images are joined and pressed together in the way that sedimentary rock presses the remains of countless sea creatures into limestone, and then into marble. In a final stage of improvisation the completed wax brutally bent into a new shape (the broken lines appears frequently in both his canvases and sculptures). Transferred into bronze this gesture takes on greater violence, greater strength. These are baroque gestures, but snapped and bent.
Sculpture can have its own problem, or rather its own grain or property; the fusion of sentiment, figure, environment and action, into something often seen in the round.
Momentarily futurist artists at the beginning of the century, with varying degrees of success, made composites of situations, in what they called Simultaneity. Titles of these pieces such as Car+Speed+Light, (G.Balla, 1913), make an intention clear. Futurism was referred to disparagingly as accelerated cubism, yet one could see here a kind of fusion of all of the dimensions of a situation, which were torn apart later; between the sub-conscious excavations of Surrealism, and the dry formality of later Cubism. There is a coming together of these dimensions here, and this is particularly interesting when seen in these bronzes of Valdes.
Like musical improvisors, I think Ignacio listens to his materials for a sort of echo of the notes he strikes, and constantly responds in a kind of constant reciprocation. The new drawings executed in oil on skiddy paper, seek out images in the drips and slides of the paint, always imposing the same search for figure/situation fusion.
We bring to these paintings what we like, but let us say that the artist is often no fool. I myself see in this particular strange one legged, vermillion-robed figure; the Cloven Count, one of My Ancestors by Calvino. A ludicrous story of a count divided entirely in two by an enormous sword blow during battle; the two halves live on to battle out separately vain-glorious existences, eventually reunited in a final battle out separately vain-glorious existences, eventually reunited in a final battle for domination between themselves.
Exhibition catalogue, 'Paintings, Sculptures and Drawings'
La Fontaine Centre of Contemporary Art
Manama, Bahrain, March 2005
© GILES PRINCE, London 2005