PETATE – (From the Aztec word "petlatl"), matting, (thick weaving to cover the floor), made out of palm: used to sleep over them in warm weather countries .
I try to decipher, step by step the appearance of this new series titled Petates, its beginnings, its process and its place within my work.
The first Petate, a 30 x 30 cm, (12 x 12") oil on wood, black over white background, came about spontaneously. It was spontaneous in the sense that there was no previous planning or a thought like: "I like that Petate" or "I’m going to make a Petate".
Like in many other paintings, I began by tracing horizontal and vertical lines, breaking the subtle balance that is the white canvas and that imposes the artist a charge similar to the one silence imposes on the musician or a white page to the writer.
I don’t know the reason why my hand guided the lines to entwine and my mind to wake up and follow the sign (like an animal after the smell of its prey). I just know that it is because of moments like this that painting recovers for me all of its validity and its reason of being. There exists certain wisdom in the act of painting. It is useless to think the image. It is born while you are making it.
After finishing the first Petate, I observed it. There was something in its lines, on one hand strict and harsh (calculated and calculating) and on the other organic and rebel (impulsive and intuitive) that I loved. It was like perceiving life as it hides each object. Life in death.
I decided to paint another Petate, a larger format 200 x 180 cm (78 3/4 x 70 3/4"). As I began to create a grid on the canvas in order to create the Petate, I knew that it would not be the last one, just the second one of a series of Petates that would grow and branch out.
In fact, a year later, with drawings, collages, photographs, objects and sculptures already in progress, the last Petate continues to suggest the one to follow.
Finding the unique in repetition itself.
The Petates arrived at the exact time.
My painting was following a blind alley. The literal element was beginning to take over the painting, the figure taking over the space.
As one theme appeared, pure painting took charge. The story stopped being suggested by the silhouette of a woman and the shadow of a dog. Now, the story was sprouting from the different tonalities, from the diverse lines, from the color on top or the color on the bottom. The story gave in to pure painting and it was through it that it resurrected. Nevertheless, even with all the changes that this new series implies within my painting, I see in the Petates many elements and ideas of the past.
To begin with, a great obsession of fragmenting a space already existed (breaking it, cutting it, distorting it, separating it), to then reunify it as a whole, serene and firm. Are they self-portraits of the different personages hidden under my skin? The different pasts articulating a coherent present?
I can not think of another object that materializes in such a perfect way the union of opposites and fragments, as the Petate does.
Another constant element would be the deepening in the different variations of painting. On one hand they are paintings full of matter. Layer over layer of color, variations of tones, warm grays, cold grays, complimentary grays. And on the other hand, the power of the "wash". The light figure or spot; so ephemeral and at the same time as solid as any cloud.
At last: the confrontation (war and coexistence, rejection and attraction) of the abstract and the figurative.
What spot is so ephemeral and immense that it does not include in itself the limits that will make it a figure?
What figure does not contain in itself the desire to be engrossed, to lose its identity to become one note, one brushstroke and then become eternal?
The Petates are simply lines and stains that interlace, the abstract and its classical elements.
Moreover and first of all they are Petates. Ojects.
Everyday objects that hide in their simplicity generations of culture and anonymous wisdom, creating an unexpected encounter between the antique and the modern, between the past and the present.
Boris Viskin
July, 2000
Return to Boris Viskin Essays
Return to Boris Viskin