feo está de vogue”

Passionate reader and intelligent conversationalist, Jordi Teixidor (Valencia, 1941) makes the painting ontologically clear, since they are no ser. From the title of this exhibition commissioned by Ángel Calvo Ulloa and opening on February 18: No-res. A double negative that opens up a universe of endless possibilities.

The painter went through an extensive trajectory in several stages – from the collection Support/Surfaces (Plot, in Spain), the Cuenca group, as well as Synthetic Cubism – but his recognition includes monochrome works and his consistent use of black. We interviewed them in the lobby of the Plaza Elíptica in Madrid. One step further the depths of your pictorial thought.

Please. Where can we go to Sala Alcalá 31?

Response. This is not a chronological exhibition, although it covers 60 years of painting and research, I can call it that, because I also present 32 notebooks of work from 1975. Here is the whole story of my painting and Looking at them, you can tell what kind of painter I am. This is also what you did not paint, what you should not do.

P. What does it depend on?

R. When I see that the book does not contain the sensations, thoughts or even images that I was hoping for, then it does not come true and I continue the image process. The image is a continuation of the previous image. There is sequence and cadence; continuity in the narrative of the work.

P. The title of the exhibition is a double negative: No resolution.

R. This is the Catalan term for “nada”. He has a deeper feeling in Catalan than he could have in Castellano. It brings what exists to consider the fact that the term denies it. Nothing is something that is created in our consciousness and it is nothing that I try to mold into my image. I do not confirm the lack, rather the opposite. It is the assumption of absence that creates the possibility that something exists.

P. Why do you do art?

R. No, it’s safe. I thought so way of thinking and reflection.

P. He studied at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos de Valencia. What do you remember from that time?

R. Well, at that time, in ’59, the performance of art was not admirable. I remember my companions with love. Our learning was a game against learning.

P. Entonces ends his career ¿y?

R. Salida was a docent. He lectured until he reached a moment when he thought about it I could jump in the poolwhat happens is that… They had no water! [risas]

P. In 66 he was appointed conservator of the Museo de Arte Abstracto Español de Cuenca.

R. I met Gustavo Torner and Fernando Zóbel on a Holy Week trip when I was in Cuenca with José María Yturraldo, who was a friend of mine at school, and we connected with the artists who founded the museum. If we offered to participate as a joint conservator. We have thousands of functions, since the opening of the museum we have to explain it to everyone who needs it.

P. And completely, how did you maintain access to, for example, the information about American Expressionist art that had such an influence on your work?

R. Through reading. We write for magazines. My sources of learning have always been through books.

P. What are your favorites?

R. That matters. No new novels recently; I think philosophy and poetry. Here’s what there is a huge relationship between the creation of a poem and the creation of a painting.

P. They are languages, at the end and at the end.

R. Exactly: languages ​​with their common things. All creation seems so. This is explained by a poet I greatly admire, Wallace Stevens. Explain how the construction of the poem is based on the idea that develops. Unexpected elements appear and the result is something that doesn’t count but responds to what you think is coming.

P. Find out what you’re looking for.

R. This is the work that guides you. The important thing is not that the theme fits the image, but that it is an image that confirms the theme.

P. What are you looking for in your painting?

R. Think about her and think about her. There is enormous freedom to do this or not; You can appreciate it from there. Accept the painting because it entiends, and not the other way around.

“I’m not a geometric painter: I use it, but I’m not interested in controlling space. Geometry is a craft.”

P. But there is also an affective and intuitive part that arises from investigation. It is not necessary to understand anything.

R. Interpersonal relationships also work. From there, if one doesn’t feel the attraction, don’t look for it. Attraction can also be negative. It is something complete: the way in which moving also involves how to access work.

P. A very interesting aspect of your painting is how you use color. What criterion follows?

R. I have evolved a lot. It coincides with the New York Tour in 1981, yes, I am referring to nature, if we go back to the last years, there is more tooling in that color, like geometry. I’m not a geometric painter: I use it, but I don’t care how to control space. Geometry is a tool with which space is divided. Yeah, or ejemplo, no mido. Once upon a time I decide the questions, but it is not the thought that formulates the language of this work, down to the intuitive aspect of the form.

P. Form and space are the clubs of his work.

R. PUSH form is what creates space.

P. In 2014 he received the Premio Nacional de Artes Plásticas. What do these awards mean to you?

R. No, because I only had so little… [risas]. It is satisfying and they are welcome.

P. What is an abstract?

R. This is the path I take to paint. Through it I can express my quest for creation, although it is not a word I like to use: creation is something very serious. In any case, I’m more concerned with not creating than creating. The negative part of creativity is as productive as creativity. I am part of the negative side, the negation, as a way of reaffirming or doing something like that. There are examples in painting: the most obvious are Las Meninasimage, which means the absolute presence of no image.

“I believe that painting is the poorest of the arts. Yet its impossibility brings enormous rewards.”

P. how is it

R. Las Meninas It is a painting that is not beautiful; Nunca nadie habla de su belleza. If you are talking about de Vermeer or de Giorgione. Not if you have even a little color. If you have a story but nothing relevant is happening, y There is no telling where the image came from. Velázquez was very conscious at the time of painting the picture: we did not want to paint a space as it was not a picture, and it was not to be seen at one time or another. Every time we see it, it’s like the first time and above all we can think about it; and when I think about it, it is valid as long as it needs to be seen.

P. It is very interesting what he says: take the image from here.

R. It’s the same as John Cage says when he says: “I don’t want to decide anything, but by saying that, I’m saying something.”

P. After Alcalá 31?

R. After 60 years, continuity is relative.

P. Does the color hurt you?

R. Sometimes. Ahora I treat painting with courage. I’m more interested in philosophy.

P. Have you worked in other media such as sculpture or photography?

R. It’s something with what I broke. I always want to do sculpture. I expect relief the most. Mainly mentally. I believe that painting is the poorest of the arts. However, for the impossibility of not being able to board, there is a rather huge penalty.

P. There is a metaphysical approach to painting.

R. More ontologically, there is what is not; That’s why it’s called that No resolution. The existence of this is not guaranteed.

P. The acercamento is risky at these times.

R. So I never have a continuous painting. I have a lot of packaging. At the exhibition we will see what Teixidor was. Completed with a collage from 1963 and the last one is from this time.

P. Are you a high performer?

R. Yes. Higher is the sanctuary of artists, like the one you can have in Alcalá 31: a chapel with three black squares. What is important is that it is a meeting place for our friends and that it is a space of contemplation, of introversion in front of the painting. Something mystical, as San Juan de la Cruz said to his cofrades when they arrived in Córdoba and marveled at the city: “We will not come to see until we see again”. Y That’s where something comes from.

“The image is a continuation of the previous image. There is sequence and cadence; continuity in the narrative of the work.”

P. How do we encounter the sacred character of your image?

R. There is gold in the black squares. The Church, weighing the whole development of discoveries, weighing on Nietzsche and his death of God, continues to exist in art. There is no art without a relation to the Church: it is the driving force of creation. Today the church has disappeared and you feel like an artist in a different way.

P. do you think so?

R. No, I’m still very interested in theology.

P. Why?

R. It contains an aspect of one’s own human being: to create something that we cannot see, but what it is; or we don’t know it’s true, but we want to know. Also from the opposite: Blasphemy is another way of understanding the sacred, just as pornography is another way of understanding the erotic.

P. How do you see the present?

R. We live in a difficult moment: not only politically, but also aesthetically. Unfortunately, it is fashionable. There is a time when there is no art movement that matters. Our pants have derotado; they have a stage
with nosotrosas Philip Roth said. How do you finish it?

P. We are obliged to look at windows in a different way.

R. The evil is that we are overeducated by capitalist interests: in money, in wealth, in easy success, in farming phenomena or in this terrible thing called “immersive”, that yes, it is art…

P. Art, that’s what it is sine qua non condition should he have it safe?

R. It helps us get into something we don’t know and even makes us better.

P. Can the world change?

R. Before Nietzsche it looked like this; after he and the discovery of nothing, It is not something that imposes itself.

P. He’s a bit of a nihilist.

R. Yes.

P. What will the art of the future look like?

R. Evening.