Aníbal Vallejo Garzón (Medellín, 1975) shows a constant interest in the relationship between figuration and abstraction, not only in the comments he offers about his work but above all in his works, which, of course, are fundamental.
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Indeed, his recent paintings, exhibited at the Art of the World gallery in Houston, always feature human figures, alone or in company, who occupy the foreground with determination, treated with wide fields of color and notable brushstrokes, and sometimes even leaving aside any distinctive detail. But the figures are placed on abstract backgrounds that only by forcing appearances could we relate to concrete objects. Moreover, this confluence of figuration and abstraction is present in many of his earlier works.
It is interesting to think that, from an authentic creative individuality, artists dialogue, discuss and fight among themselves, over time, around the same conceptual, formal or technical problems. In some way, these individualities make up a community of creators that, ultimately, is the history of art, in which each particular perspective offers a contribution to the interpretation of reality and the search for what we all are. In this sense, the debate between figuration and abstraction can be traced back to the most remote beginnings of art and that, at least for a century and a half, it has been a problem that has permeated the contemporary art scene. It is surely more than a conflict of tastes between artists or spectators.
But, although it can be said that the relationship between figuration and abstraction is the trait that reaches us most immediately in these works by Aníbal Vallejo and that, therefore, could be considered the most evident, it is no less significant for that.
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During the first decades of the 20th century, this debate was developed with an extreme belligerence that resonated among us half a century later. But those heroic times gave way throughout the world to the development of a semi-abstract art that tried to be modern without renouncing figuration, trying to take advantage of a middle path. However, this is not the path of Aníbal Vallejo, who puts the problem on another level, perhaps closer to those who, like Paul Klee, considered that the discussion was poorly posed, because art is constituted in the poetry of creation and not in the mere debate of forms.
Aníbal Vallejo acknowledges his interest, or perhaps it would be better to say his special dialogue, with the works of David Hockney and Henri Matisse. They too move, in their own way, between figuration and abstraction: Hockney with his scenes that are more closely linked to the idea of the everyday than to reality; and Matisse with his planes of color that move away from the illusions of sensible appearances. But, additionally, the title of Aníbal Vallejo’s exhibition in Houston, The unraveled figure: the seen and the unseen, brings to mind Paul Klee, who is credited with defining art as a way of making the invisible visible.
In the old conflicts it was often argued that figurative art allowed us to understand the world while abstract art only transmitted chimeras and unrealities produced by the artist’s mind. But Aníbal Vallejo’s works pose a different idea. Here what is concrete, what we see in a certain way, are the abstract forms that constitute the background; although they do not directly represent an object, they impose themselves by the forcefulness of the form and the color. We know much less about the figures: we do not know what they do or who they are, and the identification of the painting with only a number reinforces the certainty that we will never know; but the figures are also less exact than the background, sometimes superimposed and completed with the fragility of a thread that becomes a drawing, like a thought that escapes us; they all seem pensive; they all live their own story that we do not see or know.
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Perhaps all this is like life. We know much better the richness of contexts and environments; but understanding the depth of others eludes us. A work like that of Aníbal Vallejo makes us think that perhaps what we do not see or know can always be more significant than what we think we can master with reason.
2024-09-06 13:30:10