Twelve disciples of Juanele
From Thursday, April 25 to Saturday, May 25, 2024.
Julio Lavallén
On the Buenos Aires evening of February 12, 2007, the doorbell rang at my house. It was Carlos Castría who arrived from Concordia on his bike. He pedaled first from his house to the bus terminal, left it there, and then came from Retiro to see me. He came to my birthday, I turned 50, and for such a significant number, he brought me a generous gift, the Complete Works of Juan L. Ortíz. "This sensitive seeker of the subtle natural essence of these lands will accompany you more closely. I hope you like it as much as I do," he wrote on the first page. That's why I dedicate this exhibit to my dear friend Carlos, to his memory.
At 15, I covered the walls of my workshop with magazine photos. It was a tiny loft in my parents' house. I had selected photos of some famous works of art, landscapes, faces, animals, athletes, and racing cars. Among the faces, there was an old man with glasses, thin, and with a lot of hair. A beautiful serene face. Many years later, I found out that the old man was Juanele.
From the meticulous and brilliant introduction to his Complete Works (written by Daniel García Helder), I extracted the different lines that attempt to verbalize my paintings, in the manner of meditative comments on those works where my fixation with water, with the water's edge and its reflections in motion, led me into the decomposition and abstraction of forms, while still seeing them as latent clouds, and in motion. I noticed that the color of silver (argentum) is a light that ambiguously disarms my gaze, like uncertain lights. I can feel the cold dampness, the grayness, and the changes of light at different times of the day, the different movements in form, yet motionless.
The revered master of martial arts, whose style he himself described as a sophisticated method of street fighting, Bruce Lee, advised, "Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can flow, or it can crash. Be water, my friend." I always remember those words to try to understand and transcend whatever comes. That is, to adapt, to mold oneself from the lowest level, to allow oneself to be contained and pushed when necessary.
So, for me, to think or paint water is not just a verbal or visual thing, it is vital. It's not a technique, it's an action, where emotion matters.
Download the exhibition catalogue in PDF (High resolution)
