Slovenia 2014-2017


Exhibition in Škocjan

 

Slovenia

These works constitute a modest tribute to Mexican writer Octavio Paz, in the first centenary of his birth (1914-1998).

The majority were chosen by the Jury of the Annual Review within Review Festival to award the editors of the best cultural magazines in Europe. They were exhibited in the framework of that event held annually in Škocjan, Slovenia, organized by European writers Stanka and Primoz Repar under the auspices of the European Commission and UNESCO.

Interval 1                                                   Interval 2
 oil on amate 40/60                                        oil on amate, 40/60 

 

Instantaneous architectures 

hanging over a pause,
apparitions neither named
nor thought, wind-forms,
insubstantial as time,
and, like time, dissolved.

Made of time, they are not time;
they are the cleft, the interstice,
the brief vertigo of between
where the diaphanous flower opens:
high on its stalk of a reflection
it vanishes as it turns.

Octavio Paz

1914-2014,(Two stanzas from the poem “Interval”).



     

The Grove 1                                            The Grove 2
oil on amate 60/40                                   oil on amate 60/40

Enorme y sólida
Pero oscilante,
Golpeada por el viento
Pero encadenada,
Rumor de un millón de hojas
Contra mi ventana.
Motín de árboles,
Oleaje de sonidos verdinegros.
La arboleda,
Quieta de pronto,
Es un tejido de ramas y frondas.
Hay claros llameantes.
Caída en esas redes
Se revuelve,
Respira
Una materia violenta y resplandeciente,
Un animal iracundo y rápido,
Cuerpo de lumbre entre las hojas:
El día.

Octavio Paz

1914-2014

(Fragmento del poema “La Arboleda”)


Cosmology, Teotl and the Metaphor of the Root

A solid group of scholars of the Philosophy of the Ancient Mexicans now concur that at the heart of Nahuatl philosophy lies the idea of a single, dynamic, life-giving, eternally self-generating and self-regenerative sacred power, energy or force: what the Nahuatls call teotl.  The real meaning of [teotl] is spirit — a concentration of power as a sacred and impersonal force. Teotl …implies something more than the idea of the divine manifested in the form of a god or gods; instead it signifies the sacred in more general terms, as ever-flowing and ever-changing energy-in-motion – not as a discrete, static entity.

Everything that exists constitutes an utterly inclusive and interrelated oneness;  this oneness is sacred; and everything that exists is substantially identical and thus one with the sacred.

To take this concept one step further, the unceasing generation-and-regeneration of the Cosmos by Teotl is also unceasing self-transformation-and-retransformation of being.

In this exhibition of paintings, teotl manifests itself and disguises itself before human beings in a dizzying array of artistic-shamanic forms: the apparent materialness of that which exists, i.e., the static appearance of entities such as human beings, mountains, trees, insects, birds, seeds, etc. This is an illusion, since each and every one of them is simply one more facet of teotl‘s sacred movement.

As we can see in this show, in the final analysis teotl moves and works as a “metaphor of the root or the truth” to which various thinkers allude and call an “archetype” and “logical principle” that governs the unifying “coherent core” of Nahuatl philosophy. teotl encompasses metaphysical, epistemological, moral and aesthetic facets inasmuch as it functions simultaneously as primal source, object, and/or level of reality, knowledge, value, rightness, and beauty.

 

Straight Time
oil on canvas 60/60

 

Dawn of a New Era
oil on canvas 60/60

Magic mountain
oil on amate 60/60

 

 

Feast of Contemplation
oil on canvas 40/30

 

Sprout gives Wisdom
oil on amate 40/30

 Fall and Resurrection
oil on amate 40/30

 

 

 In the Beginning
oil on amate 30/40

 

Reader and Listener
oil on amate 40/30

 

Unfolding being
oil on amate 30/40

 

 

Mask, Face and Smile
oil on amate 40/30

 

Cerro de la Estrella
oil on canvas 60/60

Human Time
oil on canvas 70/50

 

 

Sensuality and Reflection
oil on amate 60/40

 

 To Approach the Other
oil on canvas 40/60

 

 Walk Out of Loneliness
oil on canvas, 40/60

 

 

Philosophy of the Present
oil on canvas 30/30

 

Opportunities for Love
oil on canvas 60/40

 

On a Cosmic Scale
óleo sobre lienzo 60/40