ARTIST STATEMENT
Heraclitus said: "The most beautiful order in the world continues to be a haphazard collection of things that are insignificant in themselves.
In art, the "Chaos theory" points in a direction that is parallel to science. In the practice of creating, I take chance as a reference point, as a teacher to follow, from an apparent chaos and that is the direction of my efforts, to contact that secret ingredient of the universe we call spirit.
The recurring themes are the ones I love: nature, science, astronomy…In my works, I don't limit myself to a simple reproduction. In the privacy of my studio I work on my own paintings with pigments and binders and I mix them with different materials to experience and cause accidents on the canvas, from which natural phenomena emerge horizontally, using chance as an ally, “like a little Greek god, I create worlds, universes, planets... and also life, the life which, as an artist, I grant in every brushstroke during the action of painting”.
When I paint landscapes, these are not exactly idyllic or friendly, they are extreme scenarios; hard, cold, wild, places which seem to isolate man who appears small before immense horizons. At other times they are masses of people who seem to walk towards some dramatic destiny. There is something apocalyptic about it, although bathed in beauty.
Many of my creations are made of supports from fragmented pieces of wood which have been put back together. They are like an allusion to creation from destruction. The cracks and holes arise in the paintings are empty spaces which take on special prominence. When I work on my paintings I can sometimes resort to different techniques, such as drip painting, expressionism, collage... but in the last stage I go back to precise and delicate brushstrokes which unify the work.
The actions of creating, painting and when I take long trips on my own, have something in common in my mind, they are like “retreats”. But retreating does not mean an eagerness to flee, contempt for the outside world and human beings, nor does it mean exasperated loneliness. Rather, the retreat is heading towards the discovery of the simple and basic, it is to find a primal spirit which cries out from deep inside us and which, in modern times, more than ever, we have forgotten.
As an artist, I use the feelings which the experience of my travels around the world has given me. With abundant blues I capture the imprint which was left inside me by being in the presence of a mountain, a lake or a rock, a starry sky, a storm.
“I create landscapes or scenarios that do not exist, a universe with millions of stars which do not exist, the deep and mysterious depth of the sea which emerge in front of me. I create my own particular cosmos. The "cosmos" of the infinitely small to the infinitely large, and both seem to arise from the same equation. And I am part of it. I have a beautiful inner void, I want it to be empty because, that way, everything fits without anything remaining. I am one with that All, with a unit, and I can delight in the melody created by the wind”.
© Agustín Pontesta Icuza-2018