Carlos Suárez, otra vez ante el paisaje [Carlos Suárez, once again before the landscape]

And he finds himself before an intimate landscape because, somewhat worn out by the magnitude of his expressionist panoramas, he has sought to give his painting an introspective turn. Bold patches of colour no longer reign, bold pigmentations no longer reign, chance is no longer the great protagonist. Convinced that the minimal sometimes becomes great, he has set out to capture an indefinite landscape, yet one drawn from his subconscious; vast expanses can be sensed in the small formats; colour contrasts are achieved with a range so reduced and minimalist that there is little else but “non-colour”, black and white; chance — present, though not fundamentally — leaves room for deliberation. The result is a dreamt landscape, a thought landscape, a landscape of the soul, a landscape that becomes constructed despite all these foundations.

All of them rest on the simplicity of their execution — simple, yes, but also laborious — and are bounded by an almost always square frame which sometimes becomes a sculptural proposal, an accumulation, then transgressing the space theoretically reserved for the viewer and drawing the viewer closer in an exercise of intended symbiosis, as if wanting to bring them so near that the work enters the soul of the beholder. The same effect is also achieved in the individual works when some of them project from the wall and offer a closer view.

Paper, inks, paraffin and wood are the components of this visual proposal, although he does not always use all of them, since the same viewer/work symbiosis occurs when the paper support is replaced by a block of paraffin that acts at once as support and as medium. In any case, the final concept is always very similar: intimacy. And with it, an approach to the way of thinking of some of the great Abstract Expressionists whom, despite everything, Carlos Suárez has not managed to forget entirely. That way of thinking leads him to a certain Orientalist flavour, which makes it clear that his painting is not made to decorate but to make us think; not to show skill but to experience sensations; not to represent specific places but to make us admire — through the asceticism and humility of brief brushstrokes, pourings and textures — what is moving in these intimate landscapes. Therein lies the strength of the minuscule, for, as Lao Tzu teaches us, from being we see only appearance, while from non-being we grasp its essence.

RAMÓN RODRÍGUEZ

(On the occasion of the exhibition Paisaje Intimo. Sala Borrón. Oviedo 1999)