The word language has not been included accidentally to this exhibition by the Chilean artist Pablo Riestra. He has developed a fruitful practice searching painting and it's processes. In this practice he dives into fast drawing, color testing, painting and repainting until he hits a complex and vibrant comeout, detached from any mimesis.
Pablo's background has been shadowed by the dictatorship in Chile, emigration, recognizing landscapes from the past and the present. Claiming a spot on a land as a foreigner, learning a new language; recreating a new way to watch, a way to communicate. All these experiences learned to survive were incorporated to his art. Through observation the artist found a noted reference source recorded on paper. The ideal excuse for calligraphy and handwritten translations, sketches and painting tests. This is when the artist´s logbooks become essential. Writing down ideas usually appearing when traveling; painting processes taking form under handwritten notes; translation exercises between seen objects and what is drawn of them. Not forgetting the action of preserving what usually gets lost between moving landscapes and ephemeral thoughts; shaping a starting point to explore creativity which will lead to a deepening in his paintings and his style. The exchange and passing method from Castilian to Finnish, from French to Castilian - as also from and to English -, all together constructs a unique meaning net for the artist. It’s a formal system equivalent to Pablo's artistic method. It all begins from a pencil sketch to an aquarelle brush; from the first acrylic layer to the last with oil colour; the artist translates and shapes his own sign system, repeating, erasing, sketching, painting and repainting until the outcome is the right one.
Two traditional categories – drawing and painting – become eclectic through the artist's eye. These practices don't deny the contradiction nor the distance of the means, techniques and/or their motives, on the contrary they take responsibility and praise them. The line may appear strong and distinct in some sketches while it might disappear between an abstraction of two colors. On some papers we can see shades in different arranged lines while on the canvas these lines merge with acrylic and oil colors between layers. Both decontextualization and discordance have been developed soundly through landscapes, portraits, flowers and birds as subjects. Many times, non-fixed objects appear floating. As if the paintings with their plane backgrounds belonged to a striking idea due to their moving chromatism, or to a Pop Art dream. There lies a way to saturate the ultimate representational desire. On the other hand, the flying birds and the presence of a flower detached from their respective context, evoque the Haiku poetry from the ancient Japanese art. A way to illustrate the simple moments of life which bring joy to the humblest spirits. Riestra turns these two forms of art into one making them communicate, complementing them with an elated language which explodes into colour; a love gesture which amends – through painting and drawing – the contradiction inhabiting our imagination and also each of us.