Pablo Atchugarry

Rooms I, II, III, IX.

This exhibition Journey through Matter tries to show the influence in the works of  the encounter of different materiales, where finally nature through matter becomes the main figure.

“Toda obra de arte seria nos cuenta la génesis de su propia creación”.
Roman Jacobson

“Every serious artwork tells us the genesis of its own creation”.

Roman Jacobson

“The image can only be studied through the image, dreaming images as they are composed in dreams”.

Gastón Bachelard, La poétique de la rêverie.

As the

marks of the moon

can report its story,

we must look for the marks

in Atchugarry’s sculptures

to decode his mark.

Above all

it talks to us

its material,

the prime matter,

the marble

white Carrara marble.

Sometimes

pink marble from Portugal,

black marble from Belgium,

gray Bardiglio marble.

Other times

the metal:

bronze,

iron,

steel.

Circumstantially,

the wood.

And why not?

the twisted roots

of old olive tress

with their obliged

serpentine writing.

Uneasy

repertoire of materials

always

pursuing

a new dimension

for his formal vocation.

Of the actual sculptures

few hold a title

(would they be capable of admitting it?).

The ones that do,

do not report intentions,

motivations

of its author.

We know of his

initial formation

without known patterns,

of his figurative

point of departure

surrounding the religious theme:

several Pietá,

crucifixions,

Via Crucis,

and, meaningfully,

already in his definitive language

a Great Angel, 2006,

a Pomona, 1994,

and not much more.

Then,

the escape of all figuration:

barely any traces.

The form:

the religious transfigured

in diffuse sentiment.

Drastic disappearance of content

ideational

figurative:

the human being,

nature.

No mythologies.

No allegories.

Barely some homage,

no allegorical pretentions:

Monumento alla civiltà e cultura del lavoro, Lecco, 2002.

However,

we could not say

about these sculptures

what Sartre says about Calder’s:

“It does not suggest anything…

its motives do not mean anything…

they do not remit to anything that is not themselves.

They are, that is all:

they are absolutes”.

Apparently

he eludes all allegorical resource,

symbolic.

He obeys only

to the suggestions

of the sculptural language:

matter,

volume,

planes,

void,

space,

light…

Nothing that differs,

from the classicist

dimensions.

In spite of his incursion

in the territory of techniques

and modern materials

his art is maintained

on the sideline of the

technological dimension,

away from

the emptied subjectivity

of a Calder

or a Pevsner.

They have no echo here.

Their abstract forms,

inevitable,

do not exclude

an implicit dimension,

that impose an order

in the inert

in the organic

in the fantastic natural,

and in that which is subject to

birth

growth

without leaving aside

tricky forms

simulations of life.

Only footprints,

sand eroded by

the wind,

the water,

matter suddenly lightened:

the ungraspable form

of the clouds,

the changing profile

of the flames,

the waterfalls.

Some of the scarce titles

insinuate it:

Hydric Energy, 2006.

Vital harmony, 2007.

Lines of energy, 2007.

Energetic Jungle, 2007.

Colloquial presence

with nature

without the mimetic temptation:

with art history,

without anguish over the influences.

Automatism:

the gesture

before the form.

The instinct,

Dada:

“The works arrive,

gentle

or strange,

hostile,

inexplicable,

mute,

or sleepy.

They are born by themselves”

Hans Arp

From the rigid involve

of vast laying stone

to the Neolithic menhir

mute testimony

of the primeval human verticality

with its cosmological times:

obelisks,

crystalline structures

failures,

fractures,

desencounters

in the vertical continuum,

ondulatory

polyphonic

of pleats:

Journey towards the light, 2007,

rests of the shipwreck

of the decomposition of cubists planes

submitted

to a soft,

fluid,

reverberating

sensual and polished

biomorphic abstraction:

Hans Arp,
Tanguy.

The unsettling encounter of Bernini

with Dadá

in a pedestal

over the grass

of the Park of Manantiales.

Petrified marvel,

the figuration of the pliets

brings us together,

on that road,

to the innocent,

leveled

archaic pleats

Hellenic,

those ineffable equilibriums

of reason and nature

of classicism

slightly draped,

humid,

adhering tightly

to the skin

to the body

inscribing in the

nature of the order of

gold pythagoric rhythms.

And those other

closest to roman pragmatism;

heavy pleats

obedient to gravity:

statue of

Augusto Prima Porta:

rhetorical prothesis of power;

superimposed

gravid cloths and shell

to the Hellenic nude of the Doryphoros.

And on that same path

the renaissance

neoplatonical

Piety of Michael Angel

prudish and oedipal

interposition of the cloth

of the cloak

between the hand of the Virgin and

the body of Christ,

disencounter between the divine

and the humane.

And finally Bernini,

baroque vortex

shivery convergence 

Greece and Rome

with cristianity:

Apolo and Daphne

Extasis of St. Theresa,

Angel with crown of thorns,

voluptuosity of pleats and folds

marmoreal virtuosity,

echoes of cloths

morbid skin

hairs,

spines,

vegetation of laurels:

metamorphosis.

All submerged in the

history

of the planet,

of society,

of art

but present in the memory

of the matter,

in its treatment

metaphorical.

All a genealogy

biomorphic convened.

“Leave the flowers and the leaves,

take the stem”.

Victor Horta

Art Nouveau,
Hector Guimard:

 of the soft and carnivorous