HOLLAND HAS BEEN THE LAUNCH PLATFORM FOR THE PAINTING WORK OF THIS ARTIST. IN SPAIN, HE HAS ALREADY ACHIEVED IMPORTANT SUCCESSES, PLACING US IN A MODERN FIGURATION THAT ALLOWS FOR MULTIPLE INTERPRETATIONS.
TEXT: ROCÍO RUIZ-JARABO / PHOTOS: MANUEL BLANCO, KINA MARULL
Rosendo Álvarez welcomed us into his painting studio in Madrid. It's his artist's stage where he materializes his pictorial ideas into surprising, colorful compositions of singular creative force.
Rocío: You always dwell in double entendres, don't you? Well, more than in doubles and folds, in hidden meanings, right?
Rosendo: Well yes, the signifier and the signified. What is physically there and the group it belongs to, right? I mean with the signifier: the group of cars "is a car," but then the meaning of each car is different, and the relationship between the two produces very changing definitions: a car can be a caravan.
Rocío: It could also be a living room...
Rosendo: Yes, it could also be a living room... Even a place to sleep... I don't know, they set up a flea market here nearby. They open the car, and it turns into a shop! A showcase of shoes! From slippers to tall clothes!
Rocío: Or a dressing room!
Rosendo: Yes.
Rocío: This is also a bit about the condition of objects, right? Objects introduce a reality that gives character to space. The architectural space provides the use, even the character of that use, and what is installed in it gives the character of how it's lived, what use is made of "that use." A context is created around and from the object; it's not the other way around.
Rosendo: Of course, of course, it's not the other way around. That's why we say "let's dress the rooms," and of course, the architect creates a space, but what is space? It's not an atmosphere; the architect doesn't create the atmosphere of space, really. Well, how a space is can have a big influence; if the room has a 2x2 m window, it obviously has an impact, but even then, the objects you place are... It's the part that modifies that empty space, fills it, animates it.
Rocío: It introduces time into space, right? And in your work? What interests you more, the space or the objects?
Rosendo: Well, both things. I'm interested in the objects having a space where their volume is visible, and sometimes I don't want any volume at all, so it all depends on what interests me at that particular moment. Sometimes there's no spatial reference, it's provided by the object itself. It's also an idea of solitude, but also of courage. One is alone. But when one is alone, it doesn't just refer to oneself, but to oneself with attributes that others don't have. You have three chairs, exactly the same except for color. The impression is totally different. A new definition is created in the viewer. Introducing differences halfway between two signifiers opens the door, allows you to speculate things. A chair doesn't have to be a chair precisely; it can be whatever you think or mean. It's allowed. A different way of thinking about the object itself.
Rocío: Yes, instead of focusing creativity on creating new forms for already known objects, you represent them in the most known form and aim at recognizing new things in that familiar object, right? You aim more at the creative origin than at the thousand points in which it's represented, right?
Rosendo: Exactly!
Rocío: You highlight the multiple readings in the object itself, rather than emphasizing the multiple forms in which an object can be given.
Rosendo: Yes, the multiplicity of that, it's true!
Rocío: You make a very intentional use of formal language, right? A superlative relationship between what the object represents by the definition of its name, and what it evokes, beyond the limit of its name, right? There should be a word for the function, a word for the mental utility, and a word for the emotional possibility. Two words in one object. Well, perhaps that's the function that an adjective fulfills, right? It qualifies and qualifies in its adherence to the name.
Rosendo: It's always about relationships, for example, in the series of the collector's rooms, there are historical and aesthetic relationships. The idea of possession is there in the middle... it's curious.
Rocío: There can be possession, and there can also be an impulse to investigate, about the thousand ways to see that suggestive object, each day or each time differently, by your gaze interacting with it.
Rosendo: Collectors are marvelous because they know how to see beyond the first impression. Or the opposite, the first impression is so overwhelming that you want to keep it fresh in your memory, to remember that first impression.
Rocío: What evolution has your work followed?
Rosendo: I started with an interest in the architectural, then I went through some transparencies, exploring the permeability of the figurative, almost disappearing into the color and texture of the abstract, of a material, or a background...
Rocío: Like fossils, material at intersections... Veiled figures, objects and walls impregnated with the presence in which they overlap.
Rosendo: Yes... then I became more interested in the figurative. This thing with shadows and chairs... It's another double language. Of the fixed and the mobile. The same object produces different things without moving.
Rocío: It also seems that you paint the relationship between absences, right? It seems like a dialogue between the situation of each chair.
Rosendo: I paint what remains of something, the trace of an action. The two chairs symbolize two worlds, the dialogue between two different worldviews... It's like life itself. They are realities, they are multiple but they are in the same reality. These blocked hallways, and rooms... This belongs to a series on incomunicado, clearly. A hallway is a communication path. By breaking it with a barricade, communication is broken, and it also speaks of fragility. There are relationships where you can go, enter, or not. The heart is like a Chinese teapot, the human heart is that fragile, and human relationships too. They encompass a lot, but suddenly they can break, and clack!
Rocío: Yes, and then you can glue the pieces back together, and with them, you have the same relationship as before, but with imperfect pieces, the assumed imperfection, recomposed as a form to handle, to improve upon. And the books, so present in your series "Apparent Stability"?
Rosendo: The books. Well, because it's a very symbolic element. So far they have been conveying the idea of cultural tradition. Not anymore, but until now, right? That's why in the paintings of balances... It's a blocked hallway, the rooms are also blocked in some. A room without communication is more personalized, right? It's like that because someone wants to be incommunicado, to block themselves. A hallway is a depersonalized obstruction, a room isn't. Things change, and balance must be maintained with the changes.
Rocío: It's very interesting to see how your paintings not only relate to the viewer but also to each other, right? That, indeed, is proof that they have life, they have a life of their own. This ruler you have here... it's from the Renaissance..., that Flemish soul you are... reborn in?
Rosendo: Yes, that ruler is beautiful. I would sign it as a work, really.
Rocío: Yes, as Duchamp said, the work is in the eye that finds it, even if it's already made..., as is the case with this piece, right? But well, how nice to recognize that as a work, no less a work than the one that passes through one's hands, and yet not do away with it, be dedicated, devoting oneself to the work through the use of technique, color, the investigation of its possibilities... to make it into a Work, right? I find it very beautiful... I mean, many artists rely on this cry, "in the eye lies the art," and then they start producing assemblage works, patchworks of objects that are already works in themselves, objects, and they sign them.., and that ends up being a NO to technique and to the careful investigation of the components of each color, of the chemical matter that each color contains, and its reaction to what is painted... And this is what I believe, it can't be.
Rosendo: Yeah. Well, to me, I also think it's great, right? To devote yourself to finding, and finding.., don't you think?
Rocío: Yes, if it's not a devaluative criticism, no, it's that I think it's necessary to underline because I think it's great, but less great than doing that and this, using technique, knowing color at the same time.
Rosendo: Ah Ha! Ha! Well, let's start pulling them out. This one is quite old. "Apparent Stability" is the stack of books, referring to what history is, to the compendium of knowledge.
Rocío: Yes, to the chronology. It's a reference to the use and employment. What you do with the books.
Rosendo: So that's why time is also associated through furniture. They couldn't be today's furniture necessarily; they must be furniture that takes you out of time.
Rocío: Yes, you use elements that are already well assumed, to not divert the gaze, right? And the colors...? This Flemish heritage you have? You don't give light in your paintings, the light emanates from the colors themselves, and yet, even without light, there are shadows in your paintings, right? The colors give the forms, right? Do you love forms?
Rosendo: I love colors. Colors give the uniqueness of each object. The same object is completely different in one color than in another. Colors carry history, they carry importance. Aesthetically, it wouldn't work any other way. The color comes from Holland, yes, from the time I was there on a scholarship. For an object to have referential value, it must be accompanied by a unique sense, right? If you see these chairs and it seems to you that they have served a purpose, it's because they refer to the function they have. They can immediately allude to an interrupted function. You can perceive an absence, and to perceive an absence, you have to know that someone could have been there. And that's the point. And this other one is about blacks.
Rocío: Are we talking about how you title the works? Is it pure poetry? Magritte taken to words?
Rosendo: Yes... well, precisely, this series is called "Why are our homes so beautiful?” Well, this painting is a room with a black person that I took from the newspaper, from a massacre of tribes, in Africa. It's actually about our relationship with the news, with things: They live with us, but how do they live with us? By ignoring it! We are capable of watching the news, or in documentaries, awful things, but it's outside of our lives, when it's actually embedded! That's why I paint them.
Rocío: Yes, because the painting unites them, stamps them in the same picture, like it or not, it doesn't seek aesthetic harmony, but to jumble the forms of life, in the same picture, which in this order of priorities, gives the harmonious beauty.
Rosendo: Of course, to connect them... that's what it's about. We are really seeing a dead woman on TV, or in a painting in the same room, in the same space, and we extract it from our conceptual framework of what that space is, and voilà! Let's have dinner with the flowers!
Rocío: You always explain your paintings with some aspect in the form of a cryptogram, some obvious, dissonant element that grabs attention.
Rosendo: Yes, there are also different times, elements belonging to different centuries, and they are all there, in the same space! And they are all creating not only a circumstance but a reflection. Time is talked about a lot.
Rocío: And these differences in technique that you use? Do they also have to do with these multi-times in a single space?
Rosendo: Yes, it brings confusion, an awakening, and then a lot of information.
Rocío: And the state of confinement in which the paintings of the series "Collector's Rooms" are presented? This situation of confusing -in the term house- protection with fortification, right? When the best protection is not being afraid. This underscore of time in the spaces you paint, of "paused moments," opens up a space in the observer's gaze, which is actually time, right? It seems like you paint the moment that has been left as a residue of an action, a residual moment... an atmosphere, what has remained... You paint the consequence in a time sequence, in which it has not yet become a cause. That space of time in which all causes are harbored, are possible and contained, in potential. That space of time in which the consequence of a previous cause is not yet a cause in itself, it has not yet turned into a cause, it is still a consequence, and yet in that space of time, one feels the possibility that this consequence has to, in turn, be a thousand causes.
Rosendo: Yes, what you're saying now is the Law in the key of F, right?
Rocío: Well yes, you paint the sustained, expectant step, within the Octave.
