A simple abstraction?
Black is the colour of spatiality. This idea was first developed by Manet, who caused a stir in the late 19th century with Le déjeuner sur l'herbe. The black was not used as a symbol of absence, or as contrast to highlight other colours, but rather to establish distances. A spatial value, stated Foucault about the black patch that blends the men's clothes into the vegetation in the background of the French impressionist's painting. Not to mention the transgression of the basic rules of perspective and less focus of importance on the theme. After Manet (in the opinion of both Foucault and Greenberg) the prevailing wind in art became objectual painting and modern aesthetic thought, leading to abstraction.
Despite the metaphorical load of his works (whether visual or literary), Victor Lema Riqué is probably actually talking about meteorology when he mentions wind direction. However, it's almost irresistible to ascribe the same metaphorical game on the work as it presents to us, just as several critics feel tempted to write literary texts about the artist's most narrative work. It's just that VLR is as good a writer as he is a disturbing artist, which makes it somewhat audacious to challenge him at his own game. What can one say if, after all, it is actually to abstraction that the new series of charcoal drawings points, prevalently?
It also points in other directions. A fictional architecture is insinuated in these works, inspired by the tradition of nautical theme building designs of 1930s and 1940s Uruguay, as can be seen, for instance, in the Yacht Club at Puerto de Mergulho, Montevidéu, or the El Mástil building, also in the capital city. The rounded urban shapes immediately evoke thoughts of a golden era (here and there), identified with the consolidation of modernity and of the welfare state. The drawings also comment on regimes of visibility, emphasising the less commonly looked at, the peripheral or secondary, thus jumbling up the logic of classic linear perspective.
When visiting the exhibition A Direção do Vento Predominante 2 [The Direction of the Prevailing Wind 2] perhaps it is best to keep in mind a combination of these three "clues" - abstraction, architectural inspiration and spatiality in our view - as none are sufficient without the others. We are dealing with a complex work here, which has disturbed our senses since the turn of the 21st century. All the hidden elements in the shadowy regions of these movie franchise-named drawings may (or may not) be revealed in the epic series that VLR is working on right now, of which he presents a sneak preview in his solo show in Zip'Up. Set in early 19th century Uruguay, the epopee is about Giuseppe Garibaldi and would seem to represent a new direction to another system of visibility.
Juliana Monachesi, 2013