Intuitions and materials for accompaniment

I

Flora, openings, furrows, textures, glints, buds, bushes, lights, bends, reflections, paleness, roughness, silences, surfaces, whispers, caresses, confines, strata, distances, sediments, paths, scratches, footprints, afternoons, seasoning, thickets, scrubland, clarity, air, blues, tapestry, pine needles, hours, hills, euphoria, stories, conjectures, blossoms, mornings, textures, intuitions, ruins, dreams, translations…

II

We have been invited to a translation, every artist’s work translates into their hands and deeds what came to them while walking and what they saw. One morning, one afternoon, many, wandering through the sleepy landscape of Valpark, but with a vigilant nature that ultimately triumphs over a human adventure. That silence with which definitive things speak for themselves. Things and their becoming, which is time; and time always writes one, many stories. The artist, attentive, collects them, translates them. His workshop is the indefinable place for these tasks, the place of saying with his hands a word in a language other than that of nature; but its faithful echo.

III

Insects, concrete, cracks, screams, glazes, eyes, thyme, porosities, omens, sunsets, memory, caresses, fragments, waters, thirst, remains, white, broken, gray, things, drawing, behind, above, pebbles, welcomes, transfers, frictions, cicadas, in front, time, layers, weight, perimeters, breaks, rhythms, remains, skins, landscape, pity, scree, pigments, shadows, paths, cardenchas, boards, medullary rays, grain, glass, remembering, pebbles, illuminations, lanterns, stony ground, reflection…

IV

The artist’s first hands are his eyes. They caress and welcome, mercifully, the ups and downs, the depths, roughnesses, and lights, the skins and marrow, the accents. He captured the wordless truth of what is revealed: the stony ground bathed in light descending from the blue, dusty slowness, veils depending on the air and the setting sun… all that knowledge of letting things speak for themselves. His ears are also firsthand, made more of time, of continuities; but a time that raises its perimeter and submerges, without perspectives or impositions, putting its lantern to the day. Thus, one walks to his studio, somewhat alienated, thinking of straightening shapes, textures, and pigments. To remember, to build continuities.

V

Efforts, asphalt, sunset, floors, contours, rosemary, smoothness, echo, lands, desolation, numbers, calculations, patience, design, depth, suns, aromas, skies, brightness, dryness, leaves, strands, forces, pavements, life, door, park, tracks, folds, stay, wrinkles, whiteness, slowness, instant, window, touch, dust, sweat, irises, walls, olive trees, paths, brightness, yellows, sparkles, weeds, bushes…

VI

How can we bring that into this? How can we live at a distance when we have made our home with open doors and windows? The artist does not know, and yet he knows, in another way. Let us leave him to his own work, designing surfaces and games for our eyes, depths for our souls. 

Writings, in turn, translate artistic creation. They do not distance us from that which is primal, original; they continue it along other paths, other illuminations, other arrivals and departures, other times, other breaks and other shadows.

We return to Valpark. Perhaps we never trod its paths or let its shaggy rosemary scratch us as we passed. But it has been done to us here, in another way. And we know that we are returning, accompanied, as the flora always accompanies and warns the asphalt.

José Manuel Mora-Fandos

With the support of