CORO MUDO DE NUBE Y CHARCO

In an early essay published in 1911, Mexican scholar Alfonso Reyes refers to the Greek chorus with these words:

The chorus works rhythmically, as a dynamic instrument through which […] the emotional charge accumulated in the depths of the mind explodes […] And this is the essential reason that the chorus is present at all events and even secret revelations: in order to know the drama and get in touch with it; to feel, to be moved, and to release […] the emotion […], the sorrow, the terror.*

*Reyes, Alfonso, 1996. “Las tres «Electras» del teatro ateniense”, in Obras completas. Vol. 1: Cuestiones estéticas, Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico City, page 30.

Painting is mute, it does not speak to us in words, rather it communicates to us from the origin of ideas, which are images: it is a direct communication. The eye transforms the image into thoughts and emotions. The gaze discovers the depth of existence, which is initially voiceless, and then — by necessity of thoughts — it generates words. A newborn cries after taking its first breath, seeing the madness and deformity of the world. Adulthood is the coding for all that deformity.

Clouds disintegrate into rain. Rain creates puddles. In clouds we imagine shapes and in puddles we see our reflection. Clouds are the mirror of the imagination. Puddles reflect our perversions. The paintings are both clouds and puddles. In clouds we find the freedom of imagination. Our enslaved problems are found in the puddle. In clouds we rest and in puddles we question. The cloud is the phenomenon, whilst the puddle reflects the sentient phenomenon: it is a dynamic of the internal and the external.

We are all some kind of tragic heroes and what unites us is the fundamental way of perceiving what surrounds us. We perceive the sun, light, shadow and matter, which are then encoded with different terms. Emotions and feelings arise, to finally arrive at what concerns every human being: morals and ethics.

The statement of this exhibition is that the works shown comprise a silent chorus of clouds and puddles, that invite the spectator, through the characters depicted in the paintings, to witness the spectacle of perceiving life.

Rodrigo Echeverría, Mexico City, February 2021