The artist and the work of art

With his imagination, the artist recreates the world. He contemplates, manipulates and transforms reality. If the spectator is afraid of not understanding a work of art, it is because he does not realize that there is nothing to understand or not understand. There is always a margin of doubt, of magic, of incomprehensibility, which leaves the spectator indecisive, for not finding an immediate solution to this system of signs that escapes his model of understanding the world.

The artist is not a subject who has things or secrets to tell an audience. He invents, investigates knowledge and relationships; more than ideas and objects, he invents a parallel world. He alters the order of the visible like a magician; he is a creator of illusions, a forger. (Orson Welles)

The shortest path between the artist and his work is not a curved line, much less a straight line; It is the reverie, even if it is the reverie of reason, that led Mondrian to observe the sea, the sky and the stars, and then to define this reality plastically through horizontal and vertical lines that intersect. The work of art is an invention of the artist's fantasy, who lives plagiarizing himself (J. L. Borges). The images that are shown seem to hide other images; in the depths of this visible surface, a dark territory extends. We learn, through art, that we always keep a dark geography around us. Talking about the work of art can create a reality that is distant from that which the eye contemplates.

Art challenges the eye. It often takes refuge in zones of silence, waiting for solitary contemplation (Bachelard), free from concepts and prejudices, like an unfathomable mystery. It is worth emphasizing: the discourse does not make the work, but there is a demand for thought in the face of the materials and concepts that involve theory and practice.

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