Sala LAi

FRAGMENTS

Sala LAi - Calle Rosario, 21. Barrio de La Soledad, Cimadevilla

fragments | JOSE A. SUAREZ solo show painting at sala LAi

On approaching the paintings of José A. Suárez the first thing to catch the eye is the way they are laid out in broad parallel bands. In the upper bands complete silence reigns. There is nothing other than the aura emanating from each colour; the rest is stillness and absorption. There is a certain sensation of freedom in these chromatic zones. Perhaps this sense of space has its origins in the great expanses of the sea; almost infinite shapes, silent and fickle of form and colour.

In the lower bands this flat universe is transformed and complemented by means of a figurative distorting idiom. Now beings, which are a cross between the organic and the inorganic, make their appearance. This is a world crowded with figures united in rapid movement and rhythm. The dense and colourful textures these human shapes are made define the space through a network of symbolism. Once again a maritime metaphor is used in which the same beings, linked by common work relations, become a reality.

José A. Suárez moves along that border-line between two different but immediate worlds. On the one hand the sea, with its independent spirit of freedom; on the other, the weight of the material burdens of a life in common.

The greatest achievement of his work as a painter is to balance these diverse contents. He knows how to express - by means of form and colour - two distinct ways of facing up to life, and he combines them both harmoniously. The rational and the irrational seem to be joined by threads, which strike a balance in each of his works between constructive abstraction and poetic transgression of geometric rigidity. But the composition as a whole vibrates more than the sum of its individual parts.

Not only does this type of fusion occur in each individual painting, but all the works on display are linked in such a fluid manner that it seems that the paint is capable of extending beyond the limits of the canvas. The impression this all gives is of wrapping together magic and fiction, as well as reality and everyday feeling, in a way which adds up to an expression of life as it really is.

Antonio Alonso de la Torre
Art historian and art exhibition critic