Vertical Absorption XIII Painting

Vertical Absorption The “Vertical Absorption” series is more spiritual in character due to the propensity for ascension, for verticality. I have tried to render the metaphysical side – the isolation in empty spaces – of the manifestations of the psychic or the unpredictable in reality. Stripes and fragments rise to higher planes. It is all about a correspondence between the telluric and the celestial, the physical and psychical decomposition that is dissolved, absorbed into the infinite. I have always wondered what happens to all the information and memories we store or inherit with the collective unconscious after our physic existence ceases. Gustav Jung says that “any comprehension and all that is comprehended is in itself of psychic nature and in this regard we are captive in an exclusively psychic world”. The trough is, in my work, a kind of reservoir resembling the subconscious, from where deeply rooted fragments, traditions and abstractions spring and are immediately absorbed into vertical ascension. At the same time, I see some of my compositions as hierophanies, manifestations of the sacred, the unpredictable or the absurd, as I prefer to call it. Mircea Eliade says that space is not homogeneous; therefore, such manifestations occur where there are ruptures that allow the unpredictable to arise. These manifestations are the pretexts for images, for the effect of spontaneity that I seek in my works, for the elements that appear all of a sudden, violently and dynamically. What has always interested me in an image is the effect of space, of full-empty areas, the focus on certain parts and bringing them to the foreground. Techniques like dripping, imprints or brush strokes, the spatula and other tools help me preserve the freshness of my paintings, to find a balance between the full, loaded areas and the empty, inert ones. I have given the trough, this common, rudimentary object, a new meaning, not only that of a reservoir, a source of water, but also the whole psychical background with exterior manifestations. I find myself in a capitalist world held captive by technology, eager to return to an older source, to a farther, abstract corner belonging to an archaic cultural background, in search for the verticality that has become so necessary in our times.