GUILHERME DABLE
Guilherme Bueno
There are two noteworthy scenes in the history of painting in the middle of the twentieth century: the first, widely known, is the sequence with Jackson Pollock which Hans Namuth filmed, in which the artist comments briefly on his method, “demonstrated” shortly after on canvas and glass; the second, more famous but less revealed, offers the moment when Duke Ellington meets Joan Miró at the her studio in Jan les Pins, in the south of France. It is not by chance that we make these references to reflect upon Guilherme Dable’s paintings. Obviously, the sixty years that separate them correspond to the differences in location, priorities, and objectives. However, they serve as a pretext to discuss how the artist from Brazil’s southern region deals with two terms clearly visible and current in his work – musicality and improvisation.
Both concepts are present, mainly, in some works Dable creates with his colleagues at Atelier Subterrânea in the city of Porto Alegre. In these works, there is the alternation between musical composition, performance and drawing, creating a “perimeter of poetic energy”, where three forms of expression merge and feed (off) each other. The improvisation present there serves as a transplant, not of a piece of work, but rather of studio dynamics in the form of work, that is, of the process – with its maneuvers and solutions – as a poetic matter. In this, he moves from modern painting (and the aforementioned footage is the best witness) so that, much like in the cases of Pollock and Miró-Ellington, the emphasis is on correspondence, and not necessarily on where artistic means meet. But, to stick to our point, we must ask ourselves: what is and what is not in common between the Dable in the collective studio and the one we see here in his solo exhibition? This question is crucial to what we perceive in his paintings as a condensation in that field outlined by the performance on an object (the canvas). Furthermore, it questions us about the position of improvisation – if there is any – in his works. In this precise point, we notice his incisive reflection on painting.
We return, momentarily, to Pollock, in the form that French philosopher Hubert Damisch saw when analyzing his painting: “The question of these intertwinings [he is referring to dripping technique] is not [...] a fact that painting works on: it is born from the gesture, from which it translates each turn, the slightest hesitation, the refusals. It is the accomplishment of an immediate relationship [...] A painting by Pollock is not only the result of work, a finished product that eludes its creator, but also the register of successive steps in the genesis of a work of art in which each gesture, in its own turn, materializes to modify and complete the structure”. The logic described here is apt and, to a certain extent, enables the shift towards Dable’s concerns. And in them we feel the inflection, or better yet, the adjustment, between improvisation and the articulation of a pictorial order. This can be better acknowledged by means of three factors: the malleable value of the sketch, the system of “cutting” some strokes, and the equalization of certain pliable qualities to suit a medium that is not always tolerant of them. Let us unravel each part.
Dable’s sketches on canvas oscillate between an initial and a final scoring. The line that runs through the planes at one moment aim to frame an area to be painted; in another, it restricts the already painted surface. Thus, it dissipates from the mere character ascribed to the sketch, bestowing upon it the role of an axis with which to articulate the relationship between these planes, however, doing so by annulling an “immediate” framework with figures and background. It is a dual anti-outline, in which it does not predetermine the design of the painting, nor does it compartmentalize, definitively separating the areas, making them accept values that are in keeping with the relationship with the painting as a whole and with neighboring segments. The sketch can, as we have said, be a final score, but it does not have the finalizing intention to “conclude” the painting, to impose the “final touch”.
The system of “cutting” strokes follows the same path. The initial impression some parts may cause is one of geometry; however, the opposite seems to occur. After all, geometry is, whether we like it or not, nothing but an applied structure, a previously-determined instrument from which the artist establishes a method according to which he plans to conceptualize the space offered by the canvas. In Dable, lines and planes are, first of all, a search for a way to define the limit where a part settles, when it becomes separated or merges two areas, much like paintings are organized between the screen’s contention and exceeding it. It would be also acceptable to understand that the coexistence between some of these drier cuts and the assimilation of paint drippings is not contradictory, considering that both bring forth the juxtaposition between a physical dimension (the materiality itself) and another view (the spatial organization of the canvas, with its scope of depth and surface) that make up the painting, without the former trying to suppress the latter.
Finally, the “friction” between certain pliable qualities and the medium chosen. This may sound strange, but it is summed up in the following challenge: to produce transparencies and opaqueness with acrylic paint. The characteristics of acrylic are not the most affable to this possibility – in fact, they tend to be more withdrawn. Acrylic requires swift execution, opposite to the slow pace of oil, which allows for a gradual accumulation or scrapings. The quick drying would not allow time to ponder decisions more slowly, but would rather demand some opaqueness. Furthermore, an inferior plane may leave a “scar” on the more external one, given the physical aspect the paint takes on. That is, Dable obtains a pictorial quality through fairly hostile circumstances: this quality needs to reconcile a substantial amount of intuition with a timing for paints and a mix of colors in a gesture whose improvisation is highly likely to irreparably compromise the painting. Aside from that, there is also the hearty challenge of extracting something from a certain matter that it may not seem to offer, leading us then to recognize how much a small step is capable of unleashing a repertoire of new problems for painting.
Committing to painting, even aware that it no longer ascribes a hierarchical privilege to its long-standing tradition, does not, with that, cling to high ambitions and expectations. It depends on the sensitivity, when facing supposed boundaries, to acknowledge the gateway that allows this sure-footed step – neither forward, nor backwards, nor to the side – to activate it like a language capable of telling us and making us discover its colossal strength and modern quality.
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