Francisca Sutil Exhibition at the Tomás Andreu Gallery

Abstract Form and Pictorial Space

In these paintings of Francisca Sutil’s, abstractionism has more to do with an idea of perfection than with one of purity.  For this reason there is no pure color, all colors are hybrid; more than that; it is a matter of many colors used in order to produce color.

By José Cruz Ovalle

Artistic abstractionism opened up a new relationship between the arts by virtue of a possible common language.  This is the reason that Francisca Sutil’s painting may be seen from the point of view of architecture or that of sculpture.  The fact is that in the language of abstractionism, one can say something about painting without being a painter, not in order to judge it, but to position it, and this positioning involves being able to see relationships.  Architecture is -certainly- an art which sees relationships.

But this positioning involves a prior positioning of what is said, in order to discover from where and for what purpose the comments are being made.  In this case, what may be said about this work concerns those of us who hold abstractionism to be not an artistic style, but the opening of a way into a dimension that enables one to produce creatively, to have and to sustain reasoned creativity.  It is a matter not just of a point of view, but of a stance.

But this saying must necessarily submit itself here to the sequential order of writing, to narration.  For a journalist, a historian, a novelist, dramatist or scriptwriter, the form of writing as a sequence in time is identical to the form of that which it narrates – the two coincide.  Actions, facts, and events: acts whose substance is inserted in the passage of time.
           
But the structure of form is simultaneous, with no before or after. And form in this abstract painting is not an analogy or narration of anything, Its subject is not the event of its execution, because her method of execution does not seek to make present the traces of the act of painting, that temporality of gesture, as Pollock did.  Consequently, it escapes all temporality in order to be exactly what it is, here, before us, before our eyes, without representing anything at all.  There is no subject.  There is nothing to be narrated.  It is pure presentation.

Conceiving totalities

This painting, therefore, puts the writer in a dilemma: that of making the non-sequential form of this painting fit into the sequential discourse of writing.  One might think of saying without narrating: a series of notes touching on each of the dimensions with which this painting confronts us, arranged in a pattern that would make it possible to look at them simultaneously and read them in any order.  This would create total discontinuity. One might consider that if when visiting this exhibition one's glance may pass from one picture to another in a certain continuity of form, the reading can run on in a continuous text, which tells of the different dimensions in what we are seeing.  However, it is not possible to make analogies between matters that are of different natures.  But, what does one say first and what second, when one is talking about something that is simultaneous?

Coming into the exhibition, the first dimension, which appears, is that of a non-representative pictorial form which harmonizes as a totality.  The point is that abstractionism is capable of conceiving totalities.

The good lady who is going to have her house refurbished takes cuttings from magazines: the kitchen, part of a living room, the corner of a bedroom.  She is able to think in terms of the parts but not of the whole.  It is the figurative way of thinking that advances step by step along a course that seeks to reach completion, but never achieves a total.  To put it this way, it is somebody else’s job to deal with what a totality really is.
           
And in this case such a totality is a single form with variations.  It does not consider freedom merely as a possibility – which, since Kandinsky opened the way, has helped plastic arts to think of form as generation rather than origin – because it attempts to build the rhythm to sustain a single form, not to produce forms. In this sense, it might be said that this entire exhibition is a presentation of an increased degree of harmonization, rather than one of formalization.  Understanding harmonization as the way to sustain that form, to look at it in the decision that was at its origin rather than in its resulting expression.  This warns us that in creative terms, the pictorial construction of a square may involve more complexity than seventy-seven spirals tangled in the three spatial dimensions.  A matter, by the way, that definitely concerns sculpture and architecture.

And this harmonization is executed by the set of verticals that define the space of the form within each square and re-space it in different squares.  It is the pulse of a form that demands an extension.  This harmonization insists on and keeps up its rhythm so that the actual making of each picture does not alter the concept of the picture, as happens for example in the case of an informalist painter, where the emotion of the picture gradually changes its formalization as he paints.  The fact is that, in this case, abstractionism goes hand in hand with an idea of perfection in which form resists being de-formed.  The method of resisting is through the construction of insistence via an order of verticals that comprises a resistant structure.

Gravitational verticality

People might ask themselves the reason for using verticals rather than horizontals.  The point is that the perfect horizontal belongs to nature – the line that marks the upper limit of water at rest – it is the horizon, while the perfect vertical is a construction made by man; in nature it exists only as verticality.  Thus, the order of these verticals reaffirms their abstraction in a perfection that separates it from any possible representation of nature.

The vertical involves the relationship between this painting and the gravitational space of architecture.  From Renaissance to Impressionism, the gravitational in painting corresponded to a representation of nature, but abstractionism changes that relationship, abandoning representation and taking it to what is present in the picture.  If we were to cut a picture by Kandinsky into irregular shapes, we could rearrange it in almost any direction; the set of diagonals creates a pictorial space without gravity.  This is not the case with the verticals and horizontals of Mondrian, nor the case of this painting, in which the vertical rhythm of form achieves a certain resonance with the gravitational dimension of architecture or sculpture, tending to bring them closer together.

In this sense, it might be said that the whole of this exhibition is a presentation of an increased degree of harmonization rather than one of formalization

When we visit an exhibition, as we pass from one picture to another our gaze has to reconstitute itself, so to speak, before each one.  Because each one is a different form, this reconstitution has different degrees, related to the difference between one form and another.  From landscape to portrait, from portrait to still life, from one still life to another.  In abstractionism, this difference tends to narrow, particularly in the case of Mondrian.  In this exhibition we are looking at a kind of painting that narrows down this difference even more.  We can therefore pass from one painting to another without having to readjust our gaze; we are moving within the continuity of a single pictorial space where each painting is the shade of an insistence, one which retracts the form towards the lightness of the vertical rhythm of color, building persistence.  What is light becomes powerful in its persistence.  This persistence means that the gaze which rests on one picture does not need to completely fade out the previous ones, because the relationships of form in a single painting and between one and another painting achieve a certain equivalence.

Perfection

Just like each picture requires a certain number of vertical brush-strokes to make color vibrate in space, this painting also needs to express its dimension, extending into a certain quantity of pictures.  But we are talking of quantity here, not of number; here the number is merely a result of the quantity.  Because the “quantum” of vertical brushstrokes to create the space of the painting is determined by a sensitive equation and not by a rational calculation such as number.  In the same way, the color obeys the workings of the senses and not of the mind, unlike, for example, the primary colors in Mondrian, pre-determined by abstractionism understood as purity.  But in this painting by Francisca Sutil, abstractionism has more to do with an idea of perfection than with one of purity. Therefore, there is no pure color, all the colors are hybrid; more than that, it is a matter of many colors used in order to produce color.

The question of impure color illuminates the relationship there is between abstractionism and matter.  Today, purity does not necessarily imply abstractionism.  It is important to remember, for example, that neither the purity of white nor the transparency of glass necessarily gives abstractionism to architectural or sculptural forms, as it was able to do in times of the avant-garde.

Perfection in this painting refers to what was said earlier with regard to the artist’s ability to build it in such a way that the act of painting does not alter the pictorial concept of the picture.  It is one of the ways in which mind and hand work in unison.  The hand does not overtake the mind, because in abstractionism, creativity and thought are not separated.  This means that sensitivity runs according to a direction, it does not drift as a result of emotion.

This sensitive equation, which constructs the space of the picture through color structured in a relationship of sizes including the format of the paper, the width of the vertical brushstrokes and that of its overlaps, is what allows variety within continuity.  Consequently, the result is a whole made up of the single and the various.  Insistence persists in the structure in order to compose a rhythm with a variable cadence.  Thus, while in Mondrian spatial structure varies in its relationships and color remains constant, in this painting structure remains constant, but color changes.

The pictorial boundary

All of the above refers to the relationship there is between picture and painting.  From the Renaissance to early Impressionism, painting occurred picture by picture, one by one; easel painting, to put it one way, is by virtue of the picture.  Abstractionism opened up a simultaneity between the two: the picture is also by virtue of the painting, because this no longer represents an exterior reality, but instead presents the pictorial in itself; right there before us.  The pictorial is this opening up of the possibility of painting as extension of form in variation, acquiring another dimension, which is no longer limited to the space of one picture, but requires a quantity of them.  The fact is that abstractionism changes the notion of boundary; the edge of the picture and the limits of the pictorial tend not to coincide as they did in easel painting.  (Obviously in Renaissance painting this relationship is not the same as in the Baroque period).

In Kandinsky, Malevitch and perhaps more than anyone, in Mondrian, this boundary closes and opens simultaneously.

This painting starts from this premise. Thus, we have this pictorial boundary that folds out into a double boundary: one of them determining the extension of unit and the other the extension of quantity.  This notion of limit no longer considers the space of the picture solely in terms of circumscription, but simultaneously in terms of circumscription and extension.  Therefore, the picture, without ceasing to be a finite, completed unit, is at the same time a pictorial space that is open to extension and variation.  This whole matter, using a calculation that is essentially sensitive rather than mental, is the argument of Francisca Sutil’s painting shown here, in which the edges are the boundaries of the picture but not the limits of the sense of spaciousness created in the picture.
           
Although the painting remains contained in what is geometrically a square, the pictorial structure causes the maximum disparity to occur between height and width. What geometrically is a square, pictorially is not, because width is built on the rhythm of vertical insistence, which tends to continue extending itself in the horizontal dimension. Therefore, each picture appears to be a section of a larger pictorial space, which prevents the closing of the horizontal dimension of width – especially in those where the painting reaches the very edge of the paper at the sides.  In this way the edge of the picture is not the pictorial limit of the horizontal dimension built by this painting.  And because the pictures suggest different relationships of size between the square and the rectangular space of the paper and therefore maximize this aspect, it is possible to sense this argument over pictorial space in each step of their delicate creation.

And the diverse spatial relationships presented by this painting in the various pictures, are its own possibilities.

To go back to the question of space, this brings us up against the problem of the size of the picture.  Given that what is there, up close and immediately before us, has become what is possible, the gaze tends to see them in terms of the possibility of enlargement.  But the maximum limit of size wakes us up to the matter of space.  If we were to decide on a size in which our gaze could only take in a fragment, the rhythm of vertical spaces of color would be perceived in the reflection of a glance – with a before and an after – as a sequence.  Such a thing would introduce the dimension of time. The pictorial structure built with the insistent rhythm of the verticals would revert to being a temporal cadence.  Yet if we bear in mind what already is and not what might be, it is possible to look at these pictures up close, in such a way that the gaze, without moving the eyes, can take them in completely, without losing the vibration of transparency on the paper. Thus, the rhythm is a spacing out of form and not a sequence.

Depth

This question of vibration alerts us to another aspect of this painting: depth.
By the use of perspective, or without it, figurative painting represents depth, which creates a certain divergence between the picture and the wall.  Picture and wall are left as non-concordant spaces, distanced one from the other.  Abstractionism invents a non-representative depth, which, in various degrees, brings the picture closer to the wall.  In some cases their spaces may be parallel; in others they may converge and in others practically coincide.  By using flat color, Mondrian tends to make them converge.  This matter changes the relationship of painting with architecture and sculpture – arts that do not represent depth – since such a relationship no longer occurs because of the subject matter, the motif or the place in which they are put (think of the niches in which paintings and sculptures were placed in the Renaissance), but rather because all three belong to one and the same abstractionism.  It is the case of this painting, which in this way produces a closeness to them that allows it to integrate with the whole.

Non-representative depth, which Francisca Sutil’s painting produces by means of transparency, creates different degrees of relationship between the picture and the wall, depending on the color and whether the tendency of this transparency is towards white or towards black.  Transparency towards black introduces a finite quality to the pictorial space which brings the picture slightly forward, while transparency towards white produces an infinite quality which tends, also slightly, to leave it on the same plane; acquiring various degrees within this slightness, depending on the color, its intensity and its opaqueness.

The point is that abstractionism allows for degrees of abstraction, because it does not operate in terms of singleness but of multiplicity.  It is the various degrees of the dimensions thus presented that provide the way to approximate the text to the reality of this work.