Brief reflections

The prestigious modern art theorist Dan Cameron reflected on the two assertions that referred to the 20th century and created two types of works: abstract ones, which were also considered, by definition, modern art, and figurative ones, which meant rejecting the modern in favor of past examples and practices. Indeed, over time, we became accustomed to abstraction as a way of life, meaning that abstraction became another form of reality. The battle was fought, and there were no winners or losers. In each field, they left their marks, which today seem archaeological to us.

The artist Gaby Grobo falls into this dual category. Her pictorial art juggles to intervene in that example, “abstraction–figuration,” land, straw, water, pigments—elements that she gathers and summons to carry out a flawless sweeping, where the eye sees and the brain rectifies and transforms a simple scoop of thick, fertile earth into a reflection on the climatic changes that nature expresses every day.

Art takes new paths that are reaffirmed in the individual, and its main characteristic is freedom and the fascination with the solitude and hedonism of the project and its process. They are the new individualists. The artist, discouraged by the political and social context, now takes refuge within themselves and abandons all external references. Therefore, a sort of artist’s fingerprint is valued because it is unique to each person.

Here lies the paradox, art made of abbreviations, lightness, and flattery.

It is true that the move toward the 21st century began early, and it is there that we must track the traces of the path that artists later took. It is impossible not to heed the dilemmas that the masters imposed on us, visible or not. There is a handful of artists who gravitate and made us rethink new paths.

In dialogue with Gaby Grobo, we agree on the course of her routes. First stop: the artists of Color Field Painting, where the materiality of the painting is also enhanced, and they almost turn the artistic process into a religious ritual, with painting as the documentary proof of it. Improvisation was part of this trance, almost mystical, in which the artist entered into direct contact with themselves. This automatism could stem from Surrealism, which has been alive for 100 years.

It is not my intention to make a historicist catalog of contemporary art, but I am interested in proposing a reading and reflecting on the role of the discipline; to dialogue with other artists who give fruitful form to the artist’s work.

From the abstract expressionism of Pollock’s gang to Clifford Still, gesture, material painting, the thickness of the canvas—elements we agree on with Gaby. The works of Serge Poliakoff, Anselm Kiefer, or Alberto Burri are ideal for putting them in dialogue.

If you delve into that world, the boat of thoughts will not sink, and you will happily arrive at a very good harbor. I assure you.

Hugo Petruschansky