At the Right Hour

An uncertain event, an undefined space-time.                         A revelation, a warning; perhaps a secret or a tragedy.

Ay, ya llegó la hora mare

la horita llegó

ya había llegado la hora primo

la horita llegó

que me apartara

que me apartara de la vera tuya mare

sin apelación

ya había llegado la horita madre

la horita llegó

Pastora Pavón (1949)

At the right hour, one hears unison winds and bells. Now we move through hidden passages.

Sometimes when I paint—or simply when I’m in the studio—I think about looking. Above all, when I feel that strange sensation of not fully recognizing what I have before me. For me, there is something pleasurable in that strangeness. Wanting to reconstruct its traceability, its times; footprints that are no longer there. I don’t intend to romanticize.

Sometimes you catch it—Painting—sometimes you’re just about to, and sometimes it slips away; but you always find something. The best moment is when you manage to grasp it just as it has almost escaped. Something like balancing on tiptoe.

I write notes while I cut, paste, staple, paint, rest. Loose phrases, titles, open paths, sketches, etc. Not all of them are useful, but some have brought me here. My attitude toward them is almost like that of an old carpenter who treasures scraps of wood as something valuable, waiting for the day they might be used.

Object of Worship proposes an ecosystem where several open formal processes coexist in my work. A field to cross, where I encounter atmospheres of contemplation in which painting reveals itself as a hypothetical ritual.

There are many ways to reach a work. I usually paint, but to arrive at the image I wander through other processes and materials: papers, fabrics, cardboards, metals, etc. I like to keep these pieces nearby; they create a sort of environment that helps me get to the places I want. To pursue the outline.

This uncertain path makes me traverse terrains that point to different places, where contact zones are recognized that are less a physical space than a kind of aura or aftertaste. The possibility of space, of encounters and formal dialogues that lead us to sensations close to the telluric, the symbolic—in a suggestive key—are constants in my work.

García Madero speaks of “true” poetry as something that allows itself to be intuited. That seems to me a fitting parameter within the matter we are dealing with.

—Víctor González