Notes from the “Workshop Journal”

VIDAL DE NICOLAS

 

                                                                                  PROLOGUE

 

 

 

The artist always works as an intermediary between nature and the viewer of his work, it decrypts to the esoteric element underlying all material presented in the rough.

Try even to transcribe in code of random intelligible what exists in many occasions in the creative work, Picasso said on this subject: "I am not looking for", which meant,

I think that some dimensions of beauty - in short, the aim of art, resembling it in many cases the creator as the nugget gold miner: unexpectedly and in the most unusual. What happens is that the artist knows where they often produce these findings. The frequent. Work on these appearances. Causes these miracles.

Back in February 1976 Robert Martin made his first public appearance. I knew how he had prepared this exhibition, some of the secrets of his "kitchen" many of the materials used in a tense job search. I then realized that I was faced with an artist of a piece to dispose of his work to see things she did not like, how he knew to correct its excesses and its limitations, the patience with which he repeated his experiments in alchemy creative to find the exact color, texture of the material, the arrangement of the light, the balance of the spaces. This at a formal level. Because, for those still bent on the idea that you can not express deep emotions through the plastic abstraction, we referred to the dark and pathetic statement that Robert Martin made shortly after the death of his father. (Silence 1987) The spectators outside the event suffered from the oppression of the sample mourning, those close to the artist knew the grief that had been conceived.

Then came other exposures, other jobs. And they all perceived the effort of those who do not want continued enjoyment of the achievements of the work recognized, who requires daily renewal and effort. New targets different goals. This time. With Egypt as an excuse, the artist takes us, as Virgil to Dante, to cover that up story where there are windows facing directly to eternity, to those that barely hint graffiti on stucco and gems, to the geography where sometimes parietal a sleeping cat, or a palm evanescent, or stairs that come directly from the dead and ascend with us to the glory of summer. Throughout this journey the artist has given us a thousand sleepless nights for our eyes to wander quietly through the landscape of colors and shapes, and perhaps allow us to play with the tips of the fingers the bulk of this paradise to see if it really .

 

                                                                     Portugalete, February 1990

 

                                                                               Nicolas Vidal