Illuminations IV | Diana de Solares & Jaime Gili
Bringing together the work of artists Diana de Solares (Guatemala City, 1952) and Jaime Gili (Caracas, 1972), this fourth iteration of the exhibition series Illuminations looks at how these artists’ practices juggle opposing values of light and dark through the use of color and its absence or obscuration and the distinction between presence and space. While Gili’s paintings and works on paper, from the series The Dark Paintings, were inspired by Ad Reinhardt’s Black Paintings (1957-1967) and the dark legacy of Modernism in Latin America, de Solares’ sculptural works are based on a more experiential, multi-sensorial approach to color, material and space espoused by Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa. Guided by the socio/art-historical and phenomenological qualities of color, both Gili and de Solares use its formal elements to build geometric structure and spatial character in a way that commands not only the attention of the viewer but also the space in which their works are exhibited. While this exhibition focuses more on the visual and phenomenological experience of color and light, it builds upon the themes laid forth by Hannah Arendt in the text from Illuminations II and Arendt’s belief in humanity’s potential “to honestly confront and comprehend the darkness of our times, without losing sight of the possibility of transcendence, and illumination.”[1]
When writing about his Black Paintings, Reinhart was well aware of their visually challenging and exclusive nature. In a statement from 1963, he referred to the series of paintings as, “shapeless”, “directionless”, “lightless”, “colorless”, “timeless, spaceless, changeless, [and] relationless”.[2] But in this stark defense of everything the paintings were not, what remained to be experienced were the qualities of these ‘non-features’ as well as those that were left undefined, because what these paintings ultimately required of the viewer was a “continuous absorbed attention”. Though Reinhardt was actively involved with the Civil Rights Movement and donated many works to benefit the cause, he struggled to define for himself the connection between abstract art and the greater society in which the art is made. However, this conscious attunement towards the artwork, this heightened sensitivity, is what, according to Reinhardt, anchors not only the artwork in the present moment, but also the viewer’s embodied presence, connecting mind and body in a way that works to give form to the “shapeless”, what aims to shed light on the “lightless”, whether it be thoughts in the murky corners of the mind or in regards to issues that plague society at large.
In Illuminations IV, this same sense of quiet focus is evoked most immediately through the artworks’ occupation of, and positioning within, the gallery space. Gili’s imposing paintings, including a449 dark star no coco and a464 coco real (both 2018), challenge a human-centric scale in their sheer size (a464 coco real is almost 10 ft. tall) and confront the viewer with a darkly layered color palette. Thinking about the richly saturated and textureless blacks in Reinhardt’s paintings, the seemingly cold indifference of abstract painting to the needs of real life and the dark void left in Latin America by Modernism’s lofty ideals and unfulfilled economic promises, Gili meticulously structures his compositions but leaves conspicuous traces of their human nature and their place in history. In a462 coco single (2018), the interlocking geometric shapes leave gaps of underlying color that seep out from under the artist’s intentional brushstrokes and in the bottom left corner is a circle painted a terracotta red, a shape rarely seen in historical abstract-geometric painting. This abstracted reference to the human body is also reinforced in the title by the word ‘coco’ which is the Venezuelan slang for ‘head’. Gili’s exploration of the gestural mark set in contrast to the fixed nature of geometry and the stillness of darkness is also seen in his related series of works on paper. Cocoanis Paper 24 (2018) presents a similar tension between the stark geometric outlines and the darkened, swirling ground through which a yellow circle, barely veiled in gray, emerges. Gili notes that the insertion of the circles was prompted by the March 2018 Reuters photographs of homeless Venezuelan refugees sleeping on the streets of Barranquilla, Colombia. In the wake of the extensive suffering ongoing in his native country, this series marks a more conscientious effort to break the sterility of the abstract painting and instill within it a sense of human presence and connection.
De Solares’ sculptures likewise harness the viewer’s focus by engaging him/her in the interplay of color, form, material and space. For de Solares, “[her] body is [her] point of reference” since it is through her body that her senses mediate the world around her.[3] With the body as a locus point that is stable yet also in movement, space is not experienced as a neutral element, but rather as integral in the encounter of her artworks. The artworks, in turn, have a similar agency upon the space around them: in forms that elicit recollections of the organic body, such as vertebrae in the linear stringing and dangling of colorful shoelaces of Soft Column Over
Column (2016), and others, like untitled works from 2014, with their slender frames that protrude from the wall, can activate not only the three-dimensional space surrounding them, but can draw attention to the under-seen and overlooked areas within the gallery. “Lightness” is another concept de Solares employs not only in the way her sculptures seem to float in space but also in her application of color. De Solares has mentioned that she applies color structurally, in such a way that it becomes seamlessly interconnected with the physicality of the piece.[4] As Pallasmaa writes in the introduction to Eyes of the Skin, “Even visual perceptions are fused and integrated into the haptic continuum of the self; my body remembers who I am and where I am located in the world.”[5] In their capacity to simultaneously and interchangeably engage the senses of sight and spatial perception in the viewer, the works of de Solares too become active points of reference in the gallery space that cultivate awareness that is both personal and relational, interior and exterior. The tensions thus encountered in the works of Illuminations IV, the ethereality of vibrant color and the heaviness of the dark void, the structure imposed by geometry and the freedom of the spontaneous gesture and unconstrained material, provide substantive examples for the application of Reinhardt’s call for the viewer’s whole attention combined with Pallasmaa’s belief in a sensorially holistic approach to viewing and being with the work of art. This sense of concerted openness gives a directive to slow down and opens up the potential for an intimate interaction and to leave that interaction changed. In this receptive stillness, a movement that has come to be known as Slow Art, is where Reinhardt’s ‘timelessness’ lives, where the timelessness of artwork, experience and history live. To conclude, the scholar Arden Reed writes, “While the [work] does not measurably alter, our experience of it does. As we rest with a work, we [ultimately] come to see more, and feel differently, than what we remark at first glance.”[6]
Alexandra Schoolman
[1] Richard Bernstein. “The Illuminations of Hannah Arendt” in The New York Times. Published June 20, 2018. www.nytimes.com
[2] Ad Reinhardt. “[The Black-Square Paintings]” in Art as Art: The Selected Writings of Ad Reinhardt (California: University of California Press, 1975), 82.
[3] Laura Wellen. “An Encounter with the World: Conversations with Diana de Solares” in El espacio entre los pensamientos (Guatemala: Printstudio, 2016), 45.
[4] Ibid., 50.
[5] Juhani Pallasmaa. “Introduction” in The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses (England: Wiley-Academy, 2005), 10.
[6] Arden Reed. “Ad Reinhardt’s Black Paintings: A Matter of Time” in The Brooklyn Rail. Published January 16, 2014. www.brooklynrail.org
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