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| Spanish Version |
Sites of enunciation that intersect.
One voice or many?
A voice that repeats itself several times. The subject who paints is not the same as the subject who speaks. Painting is no the same as the subject who speaks. Painting begins with the body. One places the body before the canvas, the size of the body itself, set vertically: Barquero paints what his arms can encompass.
The gesture of gesso: the ground is the first layer; each layer is a new ground. Layers, layers, layers. The veiling of the glaze, the unveiling of the image. It is a leap into the void, requiring improvisation from within the painting: drawing is not enough.
The painting as a battlefield, a hand—to—hand struggle. The image does not appear, does not appear, does not appear; and suddenly, it appears. It erupts; it is found only when it is not being sought. An imagery of the sacred: revelation, relic.
The painting do not narrate, or not only narrate; they functions as icons. They tense the gaze: there is depth, perspective, but there is also flatness, inverted perspective. Byzantinism -the space of representation overflows beyond its limits, addressing the viewer. The painting returns the gaze, as present as we are.
Painting becomes incarnate: iconophagy; Tàpies is a cannibal. In the studio, coexistence. Outside it, perhaps turned into carrion: a reviviscence. Upright bodies, supine bodies; sometimes on the surface, sometimes buried beneath abstractions and matter. The density of stratigraphy, an archaeology of painting: undoing the process, stripping back time.
Brushstrokes conceal, yet leave their trace. Layers, layers, layers: many coats of paint. The vitality of the work lies in the vulnerability of showing its imperfections, a fissure left open between one work and another. Viscerality, skin, obscenity: what remains beyond —or before— the scene.
Pablo Allepuz
