Alban Galeria

An unstable whole

Ronaldo Brito

The paintings by Célia Euvaldo begin with a physical and ostensible presence. They do not evidently have, however, a beginning, middle and end. Lacking any narrative content, they seek to assert their full appearance to the maximum. And because these paintings need to attract and intrigue an attentive perception, which would focus on them and do them justice, they depend on their continuously renewed capacity to be problematized. Visibly, they result from disparate if not conflicting pictorial moments. On the condition, however, that they end up all together! In short, their destiny is to constantly pursue, anew, their own, uncertain realization.

When controlling his or her media and modes, mastering his or her craft, and delimiting his or her poetic territory, every artist runs the risk of sterilizing them. A notorious, trivial and terrible risk. In Célia Euvaldo’s case, this risk is heightened on a considerable scale; an imminent danger lurks all around these large paintings, which are only resolved in the heat of the act, in the impetus of the instant. It is for this reason that she uses restricted, frank and straightforward procedures, consistent with an aesthetic discipline aimed at making intention coincide with action. Nothing should remain latent or hidden: everything should be shown on the surface. The supposedly little accidents, the fortuitous materic incidences in these paintings beckon the viewer to inquisitively draw closer, operating as factors of innervation that undeniably activate a qualified perception, transforming worlds.

On the canvas a field of plastic forces arises, whose nature must be specified. Contrary to a first and false impression, these are not shapeless, expressive blotches revolving around subjective dilemmas. Nor are we witnessing a search for a proto-geometry, an originating principle for the formation of Order. In their own way, these canvases practice a current topology, aiming at all cost to involve the gestures, the support, and the surface, making them indissociable from one another. We do not contemplate the world at a distance: we become an active part of it. The questioning in regard to form will therefore be, from the outset, operative. For the same reason, these operations take on a cognitive and affective character, when the viewer confers the true content and the vitality of the plastic events they come to produce. For its part, the somewhat crude oil paint responds to bodily appeals, sharpening our sense of an active presence in the world.

Over time, Célia Euvaldo’s work has come to challenge us through a double and exclusive perceptive exercise, between the abundantly full black and the (deceptively) empty white. The recent and sudden intervention of bright colors – which arrived from the inside out, without extrinsic commitments – could demand a radical rereading of her work from its outset, or perhaps not. Though it is outside our scope here, this could require a critical digression. For now, we only note the unsuitability of the cliché “absence of color.” What absence? Blacks and whites have their respective lights, and shine. The copresence of reds, yellows or blues doubtlessly complicates the conclusion of the canvases, while simultaneously individualizing them. A red painting is not a blue painting. The unexpected colors lend each painting a certain distinct existential tone and temperament. Which does not in any way alter the core of its artistic personality. As I see it – and here lies the decisive consideration – the bright colors arise as additional factors of irritation and questioning in a painting that operates in a restricted area and becomes empowered by repeatedly winning out against the threatening entropy. The significant question becomes the following: how do these sometimes strident chromatic contrasts operate in a pictorial space that was previously restricted to massive invasions of black on white, renegotiating the limits between the form and the formless? Just as what takes place with the ivory black, the bright colors likewise do not instill a chemistry of painting, aiming to reveal the unique identity of this violet, or that orange or that blue. They burst forth on the canvas, resolute, instinctively mixed and diluted. The wisdom lies in finding their “temperature,” the degree of intensity that contrasts and approximates them to the blacks and whites with which they uneasily coexist. Nor do they operate as clear, positive graphic signs, guiding an already secure formal process. Rather, as evinced by their quick and liquid making, totally opposed to the materic black, afflicted with furrows, they introduce a flagrant discontinuity in these canvases, which precisely for sustaining an unstable form – they do not give in to a previous harmony – are revealed as a single integrated whole.

Rare rigor

Paulo Sergio Duarte

When an artist imprints strong character to their work we recognize it immediately; even at a distance. Before any psychology, Ferrater Mora teaches us that the term "character" means mark or note that singles out a being and therefore characterizes them before the others". This is the case of Célia Euvaldo’s work, always marked by a rare rigor. Those in contact with the Brazilian contemporary Painting - the powerful paintings present in this art scene where anything goes are not few - when they enter a gallery, museum or any other institution if there is a drawing or canvas by this artist, they soon recognize it. Artists who reach this mark owe it exclusively to the poetic power that individualizes them. It’s not an exaggeration to say that this mark was achieved through a rare and rigorous media economy, especially in her well-known and reduced palette, for a long time compressed to two colors: black and white.

Célia’s work that covers almost four decades, if we take her participation in a group exhibition at Solar Granjean de Montigny, at PUC-Rio, in 1981, as the starting point, goes through a long learning process and experiments carried out by an artist that is absolutely aware of her media, resources and procedures, as it is demonstrated in the Chronology that she wrote for the her book Célia Euvaldo.

Dissatisfied, in the best sense, Célia surprises us again, now with this exhibition in Rio de Janeiro, in 2017. Besides the Malevitchian collages that are also surprises, due to a geometrical rigor that has never been a concern, emerge the paintings with watercolor. These arouse a particular interest for the aesthetic experience in her work. The color black establishes itself with its known presence in her work and the watercolor, in tenuous, delicate, even discreet colors, contradicts the imposition of the black, with its delicacy. As in Rothko or in many works by Mira Schendel, it is as if we were witnessing the emergence of art in the world. There are, thus, two simultaneous and contrary relationships when we look at these works. The black as if it has always been there, an art that would be in the world before us such is the strength of its presence, while the watercolor is born, comes to the world, at the very moment that we look at it. A whole new poetic experience emerges in these new works by Célia Euvaldo.

Allow me a digression before going back to the artist’s work. In a very well-known text, the philosopher Giorgio Agamben asks "What is contemporary?"³ and soon warns us : "Those who coincide too well with the epoch, those who are perfectly tied to it in every respect are not contemporaries, precisely because they do not manage to see it; they are not able to firmly hold their gaze on it". Then he adds: "All eras, for those who experience contemporariness, are obscure. The contemporary is precisely the person who knows how to see this obscurity, who is able to write by dipping his pen in the obscurity of the present. The ones who can call themselves contemporary are only those who do not allow themselves to be blinded by the lights of the century and so manage to get a glimpse of the shadows in those lights, of their intimate obscurity." Concluding his seminar, the philosopher tells us: "It is as if the darkness of the present generated an invisible light, which projected its shadow on the past, and when touched by that beam of shadows, acquires the ability to respond, relating to the darkness of the now."

It occurred to me that Célia Euvaldo’s work could be seen as a visual metaphor of the philosopher’s reasoning and, more than that, absolutely contemporary according to the requirements for being contemporary. According to the artist, in the beginning her works were multicolored; therefore, adhering to her time without distancing herself from it. It was the era of the return to the painting when, not only here in Brazil, but especially in the so called Italian Transavanguardia, the multicolored canvases were abundant, very decorative, to the delight of art dealers and interior designers. As soon as she detaches herself from this trend, the color black emerges in a variety of procedures, all very personal that soon mark the unique character of her work, for more than twenty years. The darkness of the present strongly appears before our eyes. And it’s to this darkness that the artist turns her attention, exploring it in an extensive pictorial adventure. Not forgetting Malevich’s black square (1916) and the fifteen years of black canvases by Ad Reinhardt, during the 60s, the artist’s brave painting inscribes itself, most legitimately, in this tradition. Now, in the most recent paintings with watercolor emerge, in the background, other results of this courageous experience.

And, I repeat, the artist explores two ways for art being present in the world: the potent presence of the color black and the delicate appearances of the watercolor. The fracture of these two ways is present and it’s the essence of this contemporaneity and the work itself. Let’s prepare for new experiences, always presented with rare rigor.

Pinturas

Célia Euvaldo

An unstable whole

Rare rigor