Curatorial text by Dr. Alban Martínez G. - (Exhibition: Visual Poetry by Tony Roberto - NDG 2017)
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Visual poetry
The ancients have said that poetry is a picture without forms
and that a painting is a poem with forms.
Kuo Hsi.
Under the title Visual Poetry, the artist Toni Roberto (Asunción, 1966) presents a series of recent works at the Matices Gallery, Asunción, starting on October 19, 2017: they are paintings executed with the gouache technique, which consists of mixing water and various inks. With this mixture, Roberto combines subtle strokes, brushstrokes, color spots and small written phrases in the composition. Some of these paintings ‒in small and medium format‒ are made on different types of French cardboard (arches, Fabriano, Canson) and framed in black boxes; others ‒in larger format‒ are executed on canvas and bordered with a fine silver ribbon. Basically, these proposals reveal three concerns of the artist:
Firstly, the need to symbolise the existential meaning of the urban landscape – preferably that of Asunción – its architecture and its trees. Roberto has been researching this theme for some time in a sort of effort to experience, interpret and capture the landscape, while at the same time projecting his personal impressions and emotions onto it. This set of efforts gives rise to the emergence of brief stories that, in some cases, appear faintly written, which makes each work project an individual expression of the artist. Although certain profiles of churches, residences and existing corners are identified, the landscapes in these works are imaginary. Roberto is not so interested in what he sees, but how he sees it; in this sense, he works in the line of the impressionists, who went to nature more to see how to paint it than to portray it in itself. If the realists painted considering the forms in their identity, the impressionists did so taking advantage of the moment of light, beyond the forms located behind the play of light.
Secondly, the determination to conceive drawing and painting as techniques of free expression, following some of the guidelines established by two of his teachers, Livio Abramo and Edith Jiménez. This conception allows the artist to develop the idea that his landscapes can encompass the human mind, its reactions and thoughts, even knowing that such landscapes are simulated. For Roberto, architecture, vegetation and the urban context offer nothing more than an “illusion” of permanence, since everything is changeable. Likewise, the sketched lines, stains and superimposed planes generated by his watercolors reveal that nothing that exists is really free of imperfections and that all things coexist in a perpetual state of transformation and change. This principle is reflected in an evocative metaphorical phrase written on one of the paintings on display: “Sometimes the grove is architecture and the architecture, the grove. Sometimes the moon is architecture and the architecture, the moon.”
Finally, the close relationship between painting and poetry observed in these unique works by Roberto reveals a strong connection with traditional expressions of oriental art – especially the Sumi-e of Japanese painting – which the artist has explored with great interest. In this series, drawing and calligraphy, poetry and painting, as well as vigor and spontaneity, transparency and synthesis, become components of the same phenomenon. They therefore acquire the status of genuine plastic writing in relation to nature, in the sense of Zen Buddhism, a spiritual experience full of visual poetry.
Alban Martinez Gueyraud
Asuncion, October 2017.
The ancients have said that poetry is a picture without forms
and that a painting is a poem with forms.
Kuo Hsi.
Under the title Visual Poetry, the artist Toni Roberto (Asunción, 1966) presents a series of recent works at the Matices Gallery, Asunción, starting on October 19, 2017: they are paintings executed with the gouache technique, which consists of mixing water and various inks. With this mixture, Roberto combines subtle strokes, brushstrokes, color spots and small written phrases in the composition. Some of these paintings ‒in small and medium format‒ are made on different types of French cardboard (arches, Fabriano, Canson) and framed in black boxes; others ‒in larger format‒ are executed on canvas and bordered with a fine silver ribbon. Basically, these proposals reveal three concerns of the artist:
Firstly, the need to symbolise the existential meaning of the urban landscape – preferably that of Asunción – its architecture and its trees. Roberto has been researching this theme for some time in a sort of effort to experience, interpret and capture the landscape, while at the same time projecting his personal impressions and emotions onto it. This set of efforts gives rise to the emergence of brief stories that, in some cases, appear faintly written, which makes each work project an individual expression of the artist. Although certain profiles of churches, residences and existing corners are identified, the landscapes in these works are imaginary. Roberto is not so interested in what he sees, but how he sees it; in this sense, he works in the line of the impressionists, who went to nature more to see how to paint it than to portray it in itself. If the realists painted considering the forms in their identity, the impressionists did so taking advantage of the moment of light, beyond the forms located behind the play of light.
Secondly, the determination to conceive drawing and painting as techniques of free expression, following some of the guidelines established by two of his teachers, Livio Abramo and Edith Jiménez. This conception allows the artist to develop the idea that his landscapes can encompass the human mind, its reactions and thoughts, even knowing that such landscapes are simulated. For Roberto, architecture, vegetation and the urban context offer nothing more than an “illusion” of permanence, since everything is changeable. Likewise, the sketched lines, stains and superimposed planes generated by his watercolors reveal that nothing that exists is really free of imperfections and that all things coexist in a perpetual state of transformation and change. This principle is reflected in an evocative metaphorical phrase written on one of the paintings on display: “Sometimes the grove is architecture and the architecture, the grove. Sometimes the moon is architecture and the architecture, the moon.”
Finally, the close relationship between painting and poetry observed in these unique works by Roberto reveals a strong connection with traditional expressions of oriental art – especially the Sumi-e of Japanese painting – which the artist has explored with great interest. In this series, drawing and calligraphy, poetry and painting, as well as vigor and spontaneity, transparency and synthesis, become components of the same phenomenon. They therefore acquire the status of genuine plastic writing in relation to nature, in the sense of Zen Buddhism, a spiritual experience full of visual poetry.
Alban Martinez Gueyraud
Asuncion, October 2017.