Since I was a kid I always
wanted to go to places where I could look very far away, be it the
mountains, the ocean or the never ending horizon of the Argentinean
Pampas. I never knew what to say when people asked me what was I
looking at. I guess that what I liked was precisely that there was
nothing in particular to look at, it was a great feeling of liberation
for my frequently turbulent soul.
When I start a painting my first motivation is to develop a space that
presents no barriers for the eyes. That is why depth is so important
to me. For many years I've been developing a technique that more than
creating an illusion of depth, it rather transforms the painting in a
real three-dimensional space. This technique consists of innumerable
layers of translucent acrylic colors applied between several coats of
clear epoxy resin. One coat of the resin equals around fifty coats of
varnish, so after a few coats of resin you can build up the surface of
the painting up to an inch thick or more. The interaction of all these
layers of colors between the coats of clear resin not only increases
the depth, it also creates a much more vibrating final effect than the
one you get when the colors are applied one on top of the other,
without anything in between. When I finish a painting It is difficult
sometimes to tell which is the dominant color. You can say it is green
or red but if you look carefully you see that whatever color you are
looking at it is not just that color, but the result of multiple
interactions instead.
I place the human beings that appear in my paintings very far away
from the viewer, usually so close to the horizon that they frequently
look on the verge of disappearing. I do that not only to further
increase the depth but also because I want those human beings to be
surrounded by a vast , naked and mysterious universe that presents no
distractions, very different from the urban environment where most
people spend their lives these days, an environment that is hopefully
more conducive to aproach our deepest selves.
Arturo Mallmann 2007
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