A propos of the
oeuvre of Jorge Gómez, the artist from Antioquia
By Luis Fernando Valencia,
Art Critic. 1
On observing a
painting by Jorge Gómez, the first thing that makes itself visible is its
material generosity, the color pigment that seems to detach itself from the
canvas. But the painter carries out a primeval plastic strategy by which the
oil itself becomes representation, that is to say, not belonging to an inert
world, but becoming rather a vehicle of meaning.
A second maneuver
strips the representation of its mimetic aspect, in other words, of its loyalty
to reality; and a third operation leaves the work in an autonomous stance. We
are now facing a painting which is totally independent from its starting point.
From inertness to meaning, from here to another reality, in an independent
pictorial state distant by far from the initial model.
Space now abandons
any form of effectism and emerges with pristine clarity: nothing has been
placed at random, nothing is groundless. And there is something surprising.
Space establishes a dialogue with itself, without losing definition; it seems
to pursue self-elaboration of its own accord.
In contrast to the
rigid forms of premeditated painting, there is here a spatial will that joins
in a dialogue with the artist; matter seems to execute its own spatiality; the
artist plays along. Then there appears a capacity for adventure in the oeuvre,
invading the spectator, an uncertainty that allows the spectator to become
involved in the oeuvre. Novalis’ maxim comes true: “the true spectator shall be
an amplification of the author”.
And now complexity
abounds. All distance between the elements is diverse. The differences between
distinct fields are notorious given that each territory has its own
peculiarities. This creates a dissonance which, as we know from the music of
the beginnings of the 20th Century, was characteristic of those
nascent hundred years. Through vigorous brushstrokes, what is non-harmonic and
tragic is updated to this present of ours. The strength and speed involved in
the making of the work annihilate all sentimentality. Such space - open
external complexity - is the portal to our time, an intricate and closed
interior weft.
Simultaneously there
is affirmation and denial in the oeuvre. The white area announcing midday is
surrounded by black segments which proclaim nightfall. The lugubrious is born therefrom.
This attitude is the one accompanying man from the initiation of the XX Century
and which Being and Time 2, in reference
to human existence, called anguish; yet that which is dismal cannot emerge in a
literal way. The paintings of Jorge Gómez surmount it with the accompaniment of
pictorial discernment, with a plastic de-construction. And then this gloom is
surrounded by mystery, and, in this duality, painting is the victor.
Melancholia also makes its appearance, but not in an obvious manner that would
summon us to noise and excitement, but rather through the experience of art
which renders us speechless.
There is an
overwhelming angularity, which spans from the treasured ruins of the German
Romantics to the tragic Raft of
Gericault, passing through Van Gogh’s portrait in the country side at Arles spreading the sinister trace of its shadow
throughout all Provence
And now another
question is raised: ¿How does the oeuvre avoid narrative? ¿How does it dodge
illustration? ¿How does it elude telling a story? If for Deleuze, Bacon succeeds in eluding narrative by the way in which he
isolates his figures, we are, in the work of Jorge Gómez, not inside an
interior space, but rather in an open exterior space. When the work verges on
narration, when it is haunted by the anecdotic, a dense shadow begins to hover,
a cutting penumbra which preserves the work in an eminently pictorial terrain.
It is what Heidegger has called the “phenomenon”: the announcement of something
that does not itself make an appearance, through something that does appear”.
What does not appear is what the shadow keeps occult; what appears is the
shadow itself.
Realism in the work
of Jorge Gómez, as we have pointed out, is not mimetic. Since the oeuvre does
not believe in the fidelity of reality as truth, it is thus that the work
displays its imagination entirely and it is there where it slides into fiction.
To the question posed by Gerhard Richter, “¿How can I paint today, moreover,
what?” the oeuvre of Jorge Gómez responds with an interpretational realism,
that is to say, with a contained expressionism, with a tenuous remembrance of
cubism and an interior temporality that photography can never come to expose.
With respect to this last issue of photography, the painting that we have under
our consideration reverses the relationship between photography and painting:
there is no inspiration from photography, but it seems, rather, that painting
is suggestive to photography itself.
The de-constructive
aspect of the work of Jorge Gómez is evident. In his drawings it is still more
manifest. Deconstruction is an operation that withdraws from the downtrodden
terrains endorsed by tradition, in order to jump abruptly and discontinuously
to a brutally inhospitable backland. Painting is endowed with these attributes:
labyrinth multiplicity, permanent mutation and constant fluctuation. In it
there is no system, no enclosed totality, and no determined assortment; in
another order of meaning, what exist are a-systematic space, open fragmentation
and heterogeneous displacement. Now far beyond the familiar calm and quiet,
painting re-invents its new passage. That which was unchangeable and unmovable
yields way to dissemination and dispersion.
1- Valencia,
Luís Fernando. Art Critic. Article
published in El Colombiano, Plastic
Arts Section. On
the oeuvre of Jorge Gómez that goes beyond the work itself on to further
transcendence.
2- Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. State University
of New York
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