Andrés Michelena

Incohérences

@SLATOPARRA

Paris, France

07th September - 11th October 2023

Incoherénces

Text by Ariel Jiménez

Painting has existed since the very origins of humanity, or almost; and it has always sought to express the greatest interests (the hopes, doubts, and fears) of each generation of humans. But what could painting tell us today, a branch of art that has gone through infinite revolutions, that has been displaced in some of its major functions by new technologies, sometimes more effective than it is in, for example, the task of capturing for remembrance the physiognomy of those beings that are closest to us? How could an activity that many consider exhausted in its expressive possibilities surprise us? The truth is that beyond that happy ordering of shapes and colors that may or may not generate a certain aesthetic pleasure in those that behold it, in a work of art we generally expect that it be capable of eliciting from us an interest of another order: an emotion, an added element, or a certain surplus of meaning that challenges us and awakens in us the desire to understand how and why it affects us.

Andrés Michelena’s recent painting, just as his work in general, has that rare characteristic of being, beyond its formal beauty(a quality it does possess) an encoding capable of becoming a visual enigma for its observers. It manages also to express part of the unease produced by the current state of our planet, of our societies, and of our personal lives. Incoherences is the general title of a set of pieces where the artist tries to convey, with painting’s expressive tools, a state of affairs where the image we conceive of ourselves and of the communities where we live always seem to include destabilizing, incoherent, and disparate factors. Because the country where we were born no longer corresponds, at least not completely so, to what we thought it was or would become in time but is, rather, a land where the exotic becomes the everyday, the commonplace turns into the strange and the threatening, and the nearby changes into the distant.

It is just thus in his painting, made of superimposed planes on which other lines of different tones or colors are then added, and which try, often in vain, to generate an order, a legible figure, in the plane or in perspective. On a canvas background (Painting 1), a relatively uniform patch appears first, in sepia tones. Above it, in sepia or brown variables, a first figure, which we only half-manage to read because another rectangle of bright blue has been superimposed on it, tries to produce a plausible image, such as the roof of a house or the tip of an arrow. What we then seek to read as the base of that house/arrow, presents us with an ambiguity that does not allow us to do so because sometimes its shapes seem to emerge from the plane and other times to sink into it, as in Josef Albers’s “Structural Constellations.” Perhaps that is why, in one of those readings, a Vino Tinto line appears to want to anchor it without fully succeeding. Then, that first attempt at visual coherence gives the appearance of getting lost in the artist’s mind, and a light blue line attempts different graphics – not illusionist in nature - until the blue rectangle strongly indicates that another order must be sought, without indicating which one. And then we surprise ourselves trying to find how, against this disparate background, a coherent figure could be created. What remains, however, is a void, a latent possibility, an uncertainty. 1 Ilya prigogine, Les lois du chaos. Ed. Flammarion, Paris 2008.

The reference to Josef Albers’s “Structural Constellations” seems
as inevitable as it is sensible. Those by Albers are works such that the evident visual ambiguity is the product of an intentional construction, designed and calculated to produce such ambiguities. In them, the will of the artist produces the observed effects. And while it is true that the same happens in Andrés Michelena’s Incoherences, in this case, the structure that produces them is also incoherent. Albers’s would be, in Ilya Prigogine’s terms, deterministic incoherences; Michelena’s include, in the device that produces them, the very idea of instability, or that of a certain constitutive indeterminacy. They are not just a product but a principle1. Michelena’s would therefore be paintings that include in their device of meaning the idea that the world does not respond, as classical physics thought, to invariable and deterministic laws but to laws that in any case include the notion of the unpredictable, of what cannot be determined in advance with precision; and not only because our ignorance imposes limits on us that seem insurmountable, but because this indeterminism is part of the world, of its very way of functioning. In this way, his Incoherences would be pictorial devices capable of telling us about the world just as it is conceived of today by individuals who have accepted the notion of a universe open to the possible (including in its internal structure), the indeterminate, the unforeseeable, and even the chaotic.

It does not seem entirely vain to point out the recurrence with which the basic, almost childlike, scheme of a house or of habitable areas often appears in his paintings (Paintings 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9), as if somehow we were being told that only in enclosed areas is it possible for us to generate a minimum of coherence; or as if the artist, intuitively, sought to produce those usually controllable environments but without fully achieving it because through some of the edges, a certain incoherence is always introduced: a line that remains open, an angle that does not fully close, a “roof” that invariably remains uncovered, vulnerable. Nor is it entirely uninteresting to observe that only color (the most relative medium of painting) reveals itself capable of creating if not a coherence, then a certain harmony among the forms and lines that do not blend, that never close the figures that they suggest. And this is so because his, definitely, is a painting of the possible, of what seems achievable only potentially. And perhaps this is one of the basic principles of all his production: the idea that there is always something yet to happen; that our life is always in tension, oriented towards something other, which never fully materializes nor concludes; and that our life only achieves fleeting instants of equilibrium, but only precisely for being in tension towards that other that is never reached.

If in the paintings discussed thus far we seem to be witnessing the solitary work of the artist in search of structures capable
of suggesting an inconclusive dialogue or a fruitless seeing, in another series, we almost attend a dialogue between two hypothetical interlocutors, one expressing himself through white, the other with black. And then we seem to observe them, at different but consecutive times, engaging in a curious exchange. In general, the lines and planes in black seem to attempt architectural structures, to which white responds later, almost always in compact planes, seeking to unite two or more of the black lines or edges that remain isolated, and disconnected from the rest. Just as in the Exquisite corpse of the Surrealists, the second interlocutor would seek to build a figure based on the lines that the previous one left open. Except that in this case, there seems to be an express willingness to contradict what was sketched by his predecessor because, although the will to unite the lines that were scattered is evident as a response to the initial proposition, the resolve to build a coherent figure from them is not detectable. Even in the cases (rare as they are) where the black lines build a figure that we immediately read as a table, the intervention of white seems to contradict it, generating a plane that neither complements the previous idea nor leaves any indication of what could be done next. Yes, there is a legible dialogue between black and white, but one without a consensus or a clear volition to reach it. The result is a contradictory image, always - to the point of incoherence - which makes us think that if art has generally sought to build an image of its time, in these pieces Michelena draws one such image in which incoherence and incongruity seems, better than any other concept, to define human action. How, if not in that way, to explicate the effervescence of life forms that cannot sustain themselves without destroying the environment that makes them possible, and yet they continue and develop in this fashion? Is there not in that a greater incoherence, one constitutive of our time?

Exhibitions views

Artist Books

This series of artist books, commissioned by Alex Slato Miami-Paris, was printed and handmade by Gady Alroy and Andrés Michelena, in Miami, FL in July 2023, on 100 text Premium Vellum Ultra
White paper. A series of 8 plus 4 artist proof (AP) was printed for each book. The original drawings by the artist, originate from an exercise in ‘pulse control’ through breathing. The almost complete absence of friction between the surface of the iPad and the Apple Pencil in this exercise, makes mastering the pulse of the line that much more critical. By using the breath as a control method, each drawing is translated into graphic evidence of a meditation.

“Men-Art-Work” Series / Folders

Men-Art-Work is a series that comprehensively summarizes the artist’s position regarding his work situation. In the current scenario, it has become increasingly difficult, almost impossible for artists to be able to have exclusive dedication to their performance as such. The dynamics of the modern world practically demand the diversity and multiplicity of activities in order to achieve a limited budget. In this series, Andrés Michelena presents us with his own office material, the folder, whose usual use is to contain, protect, and help maintain order in a system where creativity has no more room. By using the folder as a support for a drawing, the container is transformed into content, simultaneously presenting us with a verbal enigma. On the right side, the drawing already interrogates us with its disjointed arguments, while on the left we see a “sign” which is impossible to understand. The solution to the enigma lies in the tab that is used to identify the folder and in all of them the word is the same... “art”. And this is how the artist proposes his solution: “If it rains lemons, make lemonade”, which, in other words, is to take advantage of the resources you have at hand, even if in principle you do not consider them to be suitable. They will be! once you achieve the perfect union with the idea. Applied this to our subject, it can be summed up as: “when art makes sense”.

Series of folders displayed at the installation