For many of the creators, gallery owners, curators and people involved in the framework of contemporary art, it is difficult to escape from the common places and trends of their environment.
It often happens that the system of validations, perspectives, aesthetic currents and even discourses and language meet in a common time and space, recurrently building a kind of homologation.
Conceptualism, minimalism, hyperrealism, the gallery boom, neo-Mexicanism at the forefront...
In this vein, one of the most recurrent voices has been replying at the slightest provocation, many times without taking into account what we mean but with great force: "painting has returned".
True, contemporary art is a playground, cycles, dynamics and discourses that appear and disappear, are reformulated and come back with new vigor.
Some voices allude to the centralism of the gaze -as well as its consequent exhaustion- on the sculptural dislocations, minimalism and conceptual recharge, visible breaking points so that since the eighties one could speak of a return to painting.
However, and although this apparent return does not precede the same reasons throughout the world, there is a reality that few pay attention to accurately trace: painting has not stopped in the world.
And beyond speaking of an intensification of pictorial production that justifies this return, we could be speaking, in any case, of a sum of wills to bring its relevance and vitality back to the fore.
The multidisciplinary artist Israel Martínez (1979) points out that this return is, to say the least, strange, perhaps responding to the undeniable tendentious and cyclical halo in art.
“When I started exhibiting [in the nineties] nobody wanted to paint.
Now you go to fairs and 70% is painting, very little video (which was also the trend at some point), even sound, which has been one of the most complicated formats to accept, has come to have its interesting moments both at the commercial and institutional.
Perhaps it is due to people getting fed up with the harsh daily life, the economic crisis or violence.
Now there is more play and the hard forms of plastic arts”, says Martínez.
Rafael Uriegas, Adam and Eve.
GAM Room, 2022. (Image: Ritta Trejo)
Coincidence in sight
Belonging to one of the most complete and long-lived galleries in Latin America (Mexican Art Gallery, GAM) where artists such as Leonora Carrington, María Izquierdo, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Rufino Tamayo, Frida Kahlo, Dr. Atl, Carlos Mérida have exhibited. , among many others, Sala GAM was born five years ago as a young and dynamic space, based on the taste, inquiry and particular conception of painting by its two founders, Juan Pérez (director, 36 years old) and Bartolomé Delmar ( curator, 35 years old), who have known each other for several decades and their knowledge and interest in painting is very natural and alive, which provides new energy to "generate new artists, collectors and understand it [Sala GAM] as a space with a lot of history, and see how a third generation can interfere in a place like this”,says its director.
The revival of painting also coincides with the look of Sala GAM, a space that, its founders assure, is just that: a coincidence.
“One can go easy with the feint.
In Mexico, for example, there was an almost declared abandonment of the pictorial tradition.
I remember a curator from a public institution, that when we started talking about painting six or seven years ago, his response was: 'painting doesn't interest me'.
Why is this happening?
I think because of the impact of the relevant figures that have appeared here in recent times, who were not painters.
And on the other hand, precisely thanks to an advance of curators, philosophers by training, who came from the hyper-rhetorical machinations of conceptualism and actions, things like that, that happened in the big cities as a sort of adolescent rebellion against cultural tradition.
There was a prejudice towards the Mexican and its tradition.
However, they were 20 years late;
when they began to reject painting, in the rest of the world they were already painting with the Italian trans-avant-garde, with the Germans, in New York there was a boom in the eighties… Basquiat!
Another boom in impressionist painting, Germany never stopped painting.
It is, at the end of the day, a trick, a bit too”, emphasizes Delmar Huerta.
Work of Jonathan Miralda Fuksman.
GAM Room, 2022. (Image: Ritta Trejo)
Juan Pérez also abounds in the most immediate scenario within the contemporary art market, pondering painting also from its commercial feasibility, physical mobility and penetration into aesthetic currents.
“Until very recently, for example, at fairs there was no longer any painting, only conceptual art and unsaleable installations.
In that sense, I feel that, a bit, Sala GAM started a beta due to the fact that the big galleries could not include younger artists who were painting, even though they knew that this was also what they needed.
The painting is also movable;
It is difficult for collectors to have endless cellars of sculptures.
And I would dare to say that I have noticed that conceptualism has permeated painting, too.
“As a result of this, other galleries have also opened other spaces.
More than looking for or opening a commercial loophole to govern all this, it was the taste for painting.
All the artists we have worked with have taken a leap from that and our relationship is honest in that sense, because the artists have enjoyed working with us and vice versa;
it's a swing”, indicates the director of Sala GAM.
“What we enjoy is painting.
Spot.
That this coincides with the 'return of painting' is just that: a coincidence.
But one thing is clear: you don't have to be afraid of being on a wave, outside or in the middle of it”: Bartolomé Delmar Huerta. (Image: Ritta Trejo)
A reunion for new experiences
Although painting offers the possibility of exploring diverse perspectives and reflections even simultaneously, just as it cannot escape its context and be sociohistorical and political, the creators of Sala GAM point out that this reunion with painting is also presented to us as a very rich opportunity to understand the game of art as an aesthetic experience and not necessarily moral or ethical, as has been the case with conceptualism.
"If anything, that's their moral stance," say Pérez and Delmar.
For his part, Bartolomé Delmar points out that the current trend in painting revolves around the transcendence of material interest and reiterates: “The philosophers are to blame for everything.
After all, in the past you stood in front of a painting and there was no need for any gallery owner or curator to come and explain it to you.
It was more alienating if anything, yes.
More difficult, too.
But that was just the game.
I have seen that a lot: you stand in front of the work and, despite the fact that one is versed in that world, they come and explain it to you.
The director of Sala GAM, Juan Pérez, opens the discussion and points to a vital issue, which he sees as somewhat absent in this return of painting to the public eye: the relationship between the quality and the mobility of the artist himself in terms of his penetration, transcendence and vitality from different fronts.
“Since the boom we are talking about, the quality of the paint has dropped enormously.
There are times when spending five pesos more on a good canvas is a difference that is very noticeable.
And how people are eager to generate quick money and create a lot.
In this translation, the fact that each piece has value and has to matter is lost.
It is not a minor issue because not only physical and material quality is lost, but also the importance that the artist places on a certain piece”, says Juan Pérez.
And Bartolomé concludes: “Unlike many areas, in the plastic arts, quality is transcendence and transcendence, adding very little seasoning, is financial success.
There are many cases of extremely talented artists who simply do not move, are not good promoters of their work or are not interested in it.
But when you have a good artist,
that you want to promote, it will be an imminently important best seller.
Now, what does it mean to be a transcendent best seller?
There we already talked about international power structures that no longer depend on the artist himself.
It is one thing to be a major sales success in London and another in Guadalajara, but within its core it is a fact.
Quality and some advertising effort implies profit”, points out Delmar Huerta.
Paint in every corner.
GAM aspects.
(Image: Ritta Trejo)
The infinite game of limited spaces
Facing a future in which painting is expected to continue in the public eye in a dynamic, pertinent and evolving way, the curatorial guide for Sala GAM -a space that its director himself sees as an enormous board of possibilities that in turn are bets - is still one: the pleasure of seeing what someone [the artist] does with that challenge.
Plain and simple.
All creation, the creators of this place assure, is always the same game: how do you respond to provocation, what comes to mind.
The old blank page problem.
“A lot of what we're interested in is also giving those freedoms and seeing what they do with them.
Inviting an artist to participate also implies interacting with him, it is very nice to see how a committed artist works because almost no one does it the same, they are different in their methods and forms.
That makes the relationship interesting.
And there is none with whom we have not understood each other, we are not interested in his work or that we could not communicate with him.
It is a pleasure for work.
“And it's also a bit like chess: what painting poses has been very clear for a long time, the same game is always being played.
The fact that Sala GAM is in the GAM is that too, because the gallery's archive is 86 years old and every piece that has passed through here since 1935 has been photographed and registered.
It's rich because it's having many rules kept and the mapping of Mexican art is at least located in the same space.
Inevitably it is rich for everyone”, Juan Pérez abounds.
To express question to the founders of Sala GAM for their personal commitments in contemporary pictorial matter, the letters are as fascinating and diverse as they are clear and genuine: Samuel Guerrero, Alicia Anayegui, Rafael Uriegas, Christian Camacho and Lucía Vidales.
