The Wedding of Jordana and Ross

Metaphors of Silence III.wmv

Metaforas del Silencio

Art as a Byproduct of Neocolonialism

It’s like a goat tied to a post, who can wander only the length of its tether

Jiddu Krishnamurti, 1986

Anyone who aspires towards a career as a visual artist understands that the constraints for survival are questionable and that destiny often is one of the many factors that determines recognition. One’s mission is not about seeking recognition or even permanence, but about maturing and sharing one’s talent through exploration and inquiry. Congruency with one’s ancestry, identity, and visual work is not a matter of commercial interest for any given national identification. Ancestry, visual work, and identity are irreducible aspects of signification, undefined against perspectives concerning conventional pieties. These three elements are imponderable manifestations of the self: neither up to meeting others’ expectations, nor up to appointed entities and their economic models used as marketing ploys.

Let me begin by addressing the frustration of visual-artists with dual nationalities, who sometimes suffer in the corral of Latin-American fundamentalism. Let me also question why their resulting frustrations are an order of business imposed by contemporary Medicis who seek to buy a parcel of history in the parochial institutionalization taking place inside these artists’ countries of origin. These merchants promote their wares by controlling, by and large, markets located abroad.

Certain philanthropic foundations—I speak especially of the Phelps-Cisneros—sell themselves to museums as influential and often Darwinian laboratories with their claims of heralding innovative programs focusing on Latin American issues and fostering its cultural heritage. The above cited institution takes its leadership from a wealthy socialite, and boasts about its founder, as an amalgamation of bourgeois society and contemporary scholarly erudition. Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, anthropologist amateuse and founder, sees herself as neoembodiment of the 19-c. bio-geographer, Alexander von Humboldt: a man whom the contemporary Simón Bolívar (the Latin-American revolutionary and freedom fighter) cited as the real discoverer of South America.

Such portrayals, however, never yield balanced visions of pluralism. Only by peeling through layers of hubristic poshness, can one expose the foundation’s wish to create a dialogue about contemporary art with an historic nucleus set in Venezuela. But this desire simply reflects an aberrant fundamentalism; a rigidity whose aims are the preservation of certain regional traditions, which coincide with the institution’s own acquisitions. Undeniably, the preponderance of these cultural investments represents past meaningful movements, i.e., Kinetic, Op, and other neo-geometric derivatives. These movements, needless to say, are complaisantly popular, relatively noncontroversial artifacts among the political élites in Venezuela--from outright dictatorships, to feeble democracies, up to the presently evolving Bolivarian State. They define as well the reoccurring themes coming out of this base which have found worldwide exhibitions and critiques. Contemporary art within this context exemplifies, nevertheless, exclusively the demagoguery of the ruling class’ claiming a national identity as stimulating and not one of imposed, antiquated historicism. This marketing ploy impoverishes both spontaneity and the local culture itself!

Succumbing to or courting this scheme is dangerous to artists and leads to alienation. Giving in promotes stagnation arising from these very institutionalized dictates. Such fashions segregate artists into a kind of regionalism and ideology, totally out of flux with the global community. Let me reflect on the raison d’être of any artist or, for that matter, of any human being; it must consist in a universal respect for dignity and freedom that cannot be sold, only shared. Let me underline that philanthropic societies that today yearn for an enforced authority through their wealth and through an enforced false sense of nationality and/or political or religious affiliation(s) are not only out of step with the transformative spirit of our times, but also with the globalized revolution taking placed in our culture, where the despotism of conventional borders and preconceived identities are lacking. This revolution is neither political nor economical; it is occurring within our very being, and it is the result of the change within ourselves of what is really important. We are dispensing with creative communities subjugated to a poisonous market place[1]. We have a new sensitivity and perception that will embrace cultural societies and producers alike. No simple answers arise; but we are growing in responsibility and self knowledge: we move to freedom and away from subjugation.

Ricardo Morín

http://www.ricardomorin.com

(Edited by Billy Bussell Thompson)

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[1] The mythomania of stardom by definition examines only the few. Complacency generates ignorance and puts 90% of active artists to the side and values market indices, thus staggering self-sustenance.

Infinity - by Ricardo Morin

absolutearts.com Portfolio

Pillared vision of instinctive passion

Sung by nightingales cradled in daylight

Dread neither consequence nor precedence

For it belongs to eternity

Reverberating and plangent, masking no longer

A solar plexus in protest to one’s limitations

Cracked, felicitous interpretation to his freedom

Away from the perverse shadows of cynicism,

Doubt no more, a drought of discontent.

Upheaval to communicate what’s most dear

As he rises from turbulence

What’s most consoling of his inner lament?

Apollonius opening Dionysius into the abyss of infinitude,

Bells ceased without tower to cling

Let me rest on nothing but your caressing whisper

Mused and detached

Return and departing at once

Carry this song into our universe

absolutearts.com Portfolio

Abstract: Triangulation Series 2006-08

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Platonic Triangulation, 22 x 30 inches, bodycolor on paper, 2008

A state of meditation manifests that the narrative harvest of a collective iconography underpins the signifying observing self, and its observed medium as one and the same–particularly as it is conjured up by its additive and process-oriented nature:

I choose the golden proportion 1=1.618 as a congruent format that is manifestly inherent of infinity in order to divest a dialogue between the fluidity of the medium and its geometry. At the same time, I conduct a triangulation of the plane which reasserts its thing-hood: the paradox of the fictitious flatness of the plane of the canvas against the illusive spatial depth of forms expressed on it.

Ricardo Morín

http://www.ricardomorin.com

December 13, 2008