Abraham reúne, como pocos artistas en el arte joven caribeño, procedimientos del primer modernismo y la vanguardia histórica, con elementos vivos de la vida artística contemporánea, es decir de las postvanguardia y también, aunque en menor medida, de esa zona transvanguardista, salvaje, naive, del postmodernismo, sobre todo europeo e italiano de los ochenta.

La tendencia a construir atmósferas sugestivas, a fabricar lenguajes que buscan la unidad constelativa de cada parte en el todo, a producir sensaciones de armonía, recuerda a un espectador "puro", deseoso de establecer una relación de identidad con la obra. Uno recuerda escritores modernistas de la literatura como Thomas Mann, James Joyce, o Hermann Hesse, quienes trabajas la obra de arte como una estructura autónoma, como una trama sagrada en la que cada elemento era el fragmento o la huella de una evocación pentagramal del cosmos, quienes realizaban la obra como una "caja de sentido" capaz de simular las estructuras esenciales del universo en el espacio interno de las piezas.

Estoy pensando en obras como El Juego de los Abalorios cuyos secretos habían de originarse en la matemática universal y en la música. Estoy pensando en obras como el Fausto cuya estructura estaba basada en una sinfonía. En obras cuyo repertorio partía de la idea de que, entre percepción y realidad existía una relación necesaria y que las obras de arte captaban lo más elevado de esa síntesis metafísica.

Las obras de Abraham, desde el punto de vista estructural, recuerdan ese tema, esa fascinación con el conjunto, que nos devuelve a una mirada exclamativa y un asombro moderno.

Una vez descubiertos los significantes en la historia del arte, la pintura informal se volvió "lingüística", consciente de su artificio retórico, de sus estratagemas ambientales, de su capacidad, de su capacidad de seducción. La obra de Abraham va a recuperar también esta nueva alusión al instante, a la fugacidad, al fragmento recordándonos esa pintura del tiempo gestual, donde los signos funcionan como un indicio, como la huella de una subjetividad que pasa y deja plasmada su insignificancia, su efímera oportunidad.

Recorriendo no ya lo que podríamos llamar la proxémica de la obra, sino haciendo una genealogía de los ritos psicológicos que la construyen, uno reconoce ciertos elementos del salvajismo transvanguardista de los ochenta, de todo ese retomar de la pintura post-conceptualista. Hay en sus obras un dejo naive, un cierto desenfado, una cierta retirada de la pintura como "puesta en escena" de los signos para retomarla como lugar de un cansancio generalizado, de un espacio en el que los signos canónicos están en fuga y dan paso a energías de la imaginería cotidiana. Estamos hablando de cierto tratamiento desprejuiciado con el canon de la pintura de la incorporación de "formas malas" de algunas partes de la obra.
En el contexto en el cual se cree que pintar bien es dominar en abstracto la artesanía, el trabajo de Abraham, nos plantea que no existe virtuosismo en abstracto, que un obra lograda es una que sincroniza cada mancha, cada gesto y cada solución, como respuesta a problemas antropológicos. Su obra conforma el dibujo de una "arquitectura perfecta", y esto es algo que los separa radicalmente del resto de neoexpresionismo y el expresionismo abstracto venezolano. Su trabajo es antiacadémico y no esconde esa reminiscencia tardía provinciana en algunos casos de otros autores informales venezolanos.

Sin lugar a dudas y me arriesgo a decirlo con convicción, estamos frente a uno de los talentos mejores edificados del arte emergente venezolano, alguien de cuyas contradictorias paradojas estoy seguro que extraeremos el aporte de nuevas metáforas a los rumbos venideros del imaginario simbólico de las artes plásticas venezolanas.

Abdel Hernández
Investigador Cultural. Febrero de 1995.

Pureza de expresión a través del color es la virtuosidad de Abraham Gustin, pintor, filósofo, arquitecto, profesor y hombre del mundo postmoderno. Con razón, el crítico de arte Abdel Hernández ha comparado el "nuevo vocabulario" de pintura de Gustin a los singulares logros literarios de James Joyce y Thomas Mann. Trayendo su herencia venezolana al expresionismo abstracto, el artista crea un diálogo inventivo con la exuberancia de frutas, flores y pasión, con maestría y fluida pincelada. Sus pinturas están cargadas con ritmos latinos raramente presentes en la pintura abstracta de Norteamérica. " Su obra conforma el dibujo de una arquitectura perfecta", afirma Hernández, "y esto es algo que lo separa radicalmente del resto del neoexpresionismo y el expresionismo abstracto venezolano".

Aún cuando el formato de su obra varía desde los 50 cm hasta los 2,5 metros en altura, todos ellos tienen una presencia monumental a la manera de las pinturas del maestro Holandés, Pedro Pablo Rubens. Como Rubens, la grandeza de Gustin tiene menos que ver con la escala que con el drama de los contrastes: luz contra oscuridad, remolinos contra amplios brochazos y el rango sinfónico de su paleta. Los espectadores son atraídos hacia viajes visuales de una experiencia ondulatoria infinita.

Un nativo de Caracas, Venezuela, Gustin estudió arte con Luis Alvarez de Lugo, seguido por una educación en Arquitectura en la Universidad Central de Venezuela, y el Instituto de Arte Federico Brandt. Como un artista y estudiante de la filosofía, él explora los significados del arte de nuestro tiempo en cursos como " Problemas Filosóficos del Arte Abstracto", y "Auto-conciencia en el Arte". En su más reciente individual titulada "Espacio Interno- Paisajes del Alma", Gustin fue elogiado como "uno de los talentos mejores edificados del arte emergente venezolano, alguien de quien extraeremos la contribución de nuevas metáforas para el futuro progreso del imaginario simbólico de las artes plásticas venezolanas".

Por Diana Roberts, Manhattan Arts Magazine, New York, pag.8. Diciembre de 1995.

Solo creo en la mancha que dice sin decir…

La creación es un problema harto complejo, donde la idea y la emoción son indisolubles, la semiótica es solo un artificio que intenta entrar en los vericuetos de la creación, tratando de darnos rutas comprensibles para explicar lo que hacemos. Cuando se alcanza el concepto, la obra pierde todo su sentido. El concepto solo intenta explicar una idea que comandó la génesis, pero jamás se acerca a lo que esa idea realmente representa.

El artista es una suerte de mago que ha aprendido a utilizar sus facultades en los abismos de lo inesperado, en ese magnífico salto al vacío hacia otras temporalidades, a otras geografías que marcan la senda de lo oculto, de la experiencia, que permite que se construya la obra en la confrontación de las masas de colores, y de formas que llenan el espacio vital. La obra es una estructura de carácter orgánico que se comporta como una identidad independiente de quien la crea, permitiendo que se geste una construcción a diferentes niveles, iconográfico, significativo, simbólico, temático y formal, formulando la arquitectura interna de las piezas. La obra se caracteriza por tener vida propia, comportándose como entes que obedecen a las leyes de la vida, nacen viven y mueren, a veces ni siquiera se les deja morir.

El color se cansa, se satura, para en ciertos momentos, desgarrarse y entrar en otras temporalidades, que describen otros espacios; una figura que construye cuatro tiempos para un mismo espacio. Los colores danzan para construir espacios que intentan sugerir otros espacios, que se mueven a su antojo, como si existiera una guía interna que impele el movimiento de las manchas. Un caos con su propio orden, un caos que se aleja de lo fractal.

El arte debe decir, impactar, desarrollar imágenes, comentarios, malentendidos, lo inerte e indiferente significa muerte. Soy quien piensa en la tesis de la no tesis, realmente no intento explicar absolutamente nada, no intento formular una idea sobre nada, y cuando lo hago, sé que me equivoco, la incertidumbre marca el norte, pero tengo la convicción que la pintura como medio de expresión mantiene su vigencia y validez. El reto no se halla en buscar nuevos mecanismos expresivos que nos diferencien de quienes dijeron algo previo a nosotros, ni siquiera en el mito absurdo de quienes piensan en el continuo innovar, el reto se halla en sólo decir y hablar sobre lo indecible, solo esto nos puedo salvar, convirtiendo la obra en algo completamente sagrado.

Mi obra es sólo un disparador de una cantidad de eventos que provienen de una experiencia personal, que al ser vista entra en contacto con otras experiencias, en cuyo momento se construye la imagen. Existe un punto de fusión de experiencias en las cuales cada espectador construye su propio mundo sobre el mío, navegando hacia las estelas de lo interior, de lo "otro". Soy sólo un detonante que al fundirse con otras identidades genera la obra, por eso no existe un tema en el desarrollo de mi discurso, y si llegara a aparecer, solo es una excusa para el desarrollo del mismo.
Recuerdo la obra de arte como una caja de sentido capaz de simular las huellas esenciales del cosmos, como una trama sagrada, en la que cada elemento se convierte en una evocación del universo. Aquel que intente explicarla atenta contra su misterio y al develarla, indefectiblemente conduciría a la muerte.
Alto al prólogo, adelante a la sensibilidad, alto a la adjetivación, adelante a la creación.

No creo en nada, solo en el arte como una forma de vida….

Abraham Gustin

Por esa relación nacen dos tipos de valencianos, ciudad, por cierto, hermana de Sevilla, cada cual con su doble trasatlántico, en el remoto continente de la nostalgia.

Viví mi infancia entre "infinitos atardeceres contemplados desde la azotea" y la "estampa del magnolio - que atraía a Cernuda - en el barrio de Santa Cruz, imagen para él de la vida. Porque el poeta anhelaba, como aquel árbol del barrio antiguo y estrecho, vivir apartadamente, florecer sin testigos y consumarse en su propio ardor dando flores puras".
Una vida que mi padre en su juventud pudo contemplar, lívido como la flor del árbol, al derrumbarse sobre él el muro que la contenía en el Callejón del Agua, y aparecer de repente un grupo de magnolios de sobrecogedora presencia.
Tal vez, Abraham mi alteridad correspondiente en ese otro lugar del que nada sé, excepto que sus gentes hablan como palmas abiertas, viviera también la tibieza prolongada de esos atardeceres inmóviles y respirara el mismo aire amable que Cernuda en su muerte mejicana, añoranza del que le llegara por sorpresa en otra ciudad "...como no respirado por otros todavía" decía con nostalgia el poeta.

Me apellido Dopazzo, y en la ciudad de la que vengo se tenía marcado a los gallegos con la estrella judía de su blusón oscuro. Hasta el más modesto sevillano podía comprar la profesión más dura del hombre y cargar sobre su espalda el peso que no le tocaba llevar. Aquellas vidas se fueron bajo cuerdas y baúles de otros, de los que van y vienen en las bulliciosas estaciones.

Un viaje por el aire, de azotea en azotea y de un Santa Cruz a otro, me trajo a este lugar "que no sabe vivir sino abierta y confiadamente", decía Cioranescu, y por amor me volví isleño. Antes que yo, otro Serafín gallego se volvió argentino, doblemente argentino y allí sigue, disuelto y volátil por no haber encontrado un hijo que cargara con su memoria.
Hace veinte años, y estando en Sevilla saludé emocionado en el aeropuerto a Don Francisco Morales Padrón. El esperaba viajar a Canarias con un ramo de rosas amarillas para su madre, las misma que prefiriera el poeta y novelista Miguel Angel Asturias, " un hombre que no repudió ninguna de sus sangres". Yo iba acompañado de mi madre y de Cirilo Leal en cuya alma llanera me reflejaba y que vive ahora amainada bajo la protección del rumoroso dios de las abejas, el dios arcaico del hierro, que también nos descubrió este hondo intelectual y poeta canario, de conocida vocación americana, que es Don Francisco.

Ahora es Abraham Gustin quien recala en su viaje desde la otra parte del mundo, ha venido a conocer las almas gemelas que tiene repartidas por el archipiélago.

Sin saberlo, se aloja en Tacoronte, el lugar donde pasó Roma una temporada invitada por el también pintor Oscar Domínguez, pianista polaca que luego sería asesinada por los nazis. Trae recuerdos de la Roma clásica, pero no la de la piedra blanca y latina sino de la barriada analfabeta y lúbrica por la que se perdieron santos y poetas.
Es probable que Abraham, en otro tiempo haya hecho ya este viaje, pero en sentido inverso, y fundado allá una nueva Roma americana, tan real como los columbarios luciferinos que imaginó Fellini, tan clara como la premonición que circula por Gustin y que ya, sin tiempo, pinta.

Noviembre 1998. Serafín Dopazzo.
Entrecomillados de Francisco Morales Padrón.

"Los edificios y las obras no son sino contenedores muertos: la obra de arte se da solamente en la experiencia de los objetos por parte del público". Bataille

Es común que en un catálogo de arte se pida a alguien que escriba sobre lo imposible: lo que hay en la mente del artista a la hora de crear y, más desconsolante aún, sobre la obra misma. En pocas palabras, hablar sobre lo indecible.

No me atrevo a hablar de mi propia obra, pues definitivamente no intento decir nada con mi pintura. Prefiero que hablemos de la creación, de la Historia de la Pintura, de los avatares que crecieron en derredor de aquellos que hicieron o intentaron hacer algo con la expresión.

de caminos sin caminos

Los caminos abren una ventana hacia la muestra. Aparece algo con qué comenzar un texto, aunque espero fallar en este intento, logrando así que la imagen resulte vencedora frente a la palabra.

Un algo: caminos, letras borrosas como inseguras de hacerse sonar con mucha fuerza en un mar de color.

Camino hacia las puertas y ventanas de los pueblos sumergidos, hacia carreteras ocultas de una mirada indiscreta, de una inteligencia perdida. Son calles desiertas que no conducen a nada, que nos arrojan hacia las miradas de otros tiempos, hacia lares que no conocemos, pero que presentimos. Portales que rozan una nueva manera de mirar.

Ciudades nunca vistas, nunca visitadas, sin tiempo y sin espacio real, lugares que guardamos en la memoria. Ciudades de todos y de nadie, de las que vamos y venimos, como náufragos, seguros de ese encuentro.

Veo últimamente cuadrículas de color, que se superponen para romperse y abrirse nuevamente hacia otros espacios, tal vez son ventanas no muy claras de ese pensamiento que trata de hilvanarse continuamente. Ventanas que se desgarran para abrir las puertas hacia nuevas realidades.

Mientras tanto doy vueltas y vueltas sobre las mismas ideas sin saber por qué. Trato de llegar a las huellas de mis pensamientos. Parece una obsesión. Pueblos sumergidos, caminos descubiertos que prometen un paisaje nuevo, no sé si mejor. Hojas desiertas, escaleras sin destinos, mares y sonidos, sueños de alguien que nos sueña.

La imagen como palabra, la palabra como línea, la línea como forma, la forma como pensamiento. Pero entre el pensamiento y la línea sólo está la mirada, esa mirada que construye la idea de lo indecible, o que por lo menos la desnuda. Quedo sin palabra, sin nombre para construir la imagen.

Sigo caminando. No me detengo ante la fuerza de las ideas. Escaleras ocultas que se detienen ante paredes de color improvisadas, para inmediatamente abrirse hacia los territorios desconocidos. Es allí donde comienza realmente el pensamiento de mi pintura, entre los puntos medios de las posibilidades, que en algún momento generan una realidad posible, sin yo darme cuenta.

Me devuelvo hacia la mirada oculta y extraigo de las profundidades de los pueblos sumergidos la posibilidad de seguir caminando sin explicar nada o casi nada. Quiero hacer entender lo inentendible, decir lo que no he dicho. Siquiera logro dibujar la idea en mi pensamiento. Palabras tras palabras, roce tras roce, colores sobre otros colores. Roce de una pincelada, en la que aún creo. Ventanas abiertas, sin marcos, como un pequeño agujero.

Abiertamente y sin timidez se construyen esas ventanas, guiándonos hacia la intimidad, haciendo que los colores caminen hacia nosotros para decirnos algo, susurrando ó gritando, quizás, y haciéndonos creer que sí existen, que son reales.

Nuevamente, no quiero jugar el juego de hablar de lo que no puedo. Quiero sentir sin palabras y mirar con el color, dejar atrás los caminos de la cotidianeidad para escapar a los mundos perdidos, y descubrir en esa mirada oculta los pueblos sumergidos.

Abraham Gustin

Abraham brings together , as few practitioners of the young caribbean art world do, procedures drawn from the early modernist and the historic vanguard artist with the living elements of contemporary (postvanguard) art, and to a lesser extent, that transvarguard, wild, naive, field of postmodernism (especially the European-Italian art of the 1980s).

The tendency to build suggestive atmospheres and create languages that seek to achieve the constelative unity of each part in the whole and produce a feeling of harmony recalls a "pure" viewer desirous of establishing a relationship of identity with the work. One remembers modernist writers like Thomas Mann, James Joyce, or Hermann Hesse, who treated their works as an autonomous sculpture, a sacred web in which each element was a fragment of footprint of a pentagramal evocation of the cosmos, who constructed thier work as a kind of "box of meaning" capable of stimulating the essential structures of the universe within the internal space of its parts.

I am thinking of works like "El juego de los abalorios" (The bead game) whose secrets had to spring from the universe of mathematics and music. I am thinking of works like "Faust", whose structure was based on a symphony. Of works whose repertoire sprang from the idea that there was a necessary relationship between perception and reality and that works of art captured the most sublime essence of that metaphysical synthesis. In structural terms, Abraham's recall that theme, that fascination with the whole, which return us to an exclamatory look and a modern amazement.

Once the meaningful elements in the history of art were discovered, informal painting turned "linguistic", aware of its rethorical artifice, its seductive power. Abraham work will also recover this new allusion to the moment, to fleetingness, to fragmentariness, reminding us of that painting of gesture in time wherein the signs provide a hint, like the footprint of a subjectivity that passes and leaves behind an awareness of its meaninglessness, its ephemeral appearance.

Going back over what we might not call a proxemic to the work, but rather, a genealogy of the psycological rites which build it, one recognizes certain elements of 1980's transvarguard wildness and a return to post-conceptualistic painting. His work have a certain naiveté, a certain compusure, a certain withdrawal from painting as a "staging" of the signs in order to return to it as a place of generalize fatigue, a space in which the canonical signs are in retreat, giving way to the energies of present-day images. We are talking about a free approach to the canons of painting which allows for the inclusion of "bad forms" in some parts of the work.

In a context where painting well tends to be viewed as having a command of craft in the abstract, Abraham's work, tell us there is no abstract virtuosity, and a succesful work is one which synchronizes every spot of paint, every gesture, and every solution as an answer to anthropological problems. His work conforms to the drafting of a "perfect architecture", and that is something that sets him radically apart from the rest of neo-expresionism and Venezuelan Abstract expresionism. His work is anti-academic and makes no attempt to conceal a latter-day reminiscence - parochial in some aspects - of other informal Venezuelan artists.

Without a doubt, and I would dare say with conviction, this is one of the most impressive talents present in the emerging art world of Venezeula, someone from whose contradictory paradoxes I am certain we will extract the contribution of new metaphors for the future progress of symbolic imagery in Venezuelan plastic art.

Abdel Hernández. Cuban Art Critic. February 1995.

Purity of expresion through color is the virtuosity of Abraham Gustin, a painter, a philosopher, architect, teacher and man of the post-modern world. Rightly so, art writer Abdel Hernández has compared Gustin's "new vocabulary" of painting to James Joyce's and Thomas Mann singular literary achievements. Bringing his Venezuelan heritage to bear on abstract expresionism , the artist creates an inventive dialogue with the lushness of tropical fruits and flower and heats, with masterful, fluid brushwork. His paintings are charged with Latin beats rarely present in North America abstract painting. "His work conforms to the drafting of a perfect architecture", Hernández stated, "and that is something that sets him radically apart from the rest of neo-expresionism and Venezuelan abstract expressionists".

While Gustin's canvases vary from 20'' to almost six feet in height, they all have a monumental presence in the manner of paintings by the Dutch master, Peter Paul Reubens. Like Reubens, Gustin's grandness has less to do with scale than the drama of contrasts, light against dark, swirl against broad swipe, and the symphonic range of his palette. Viewers are drawn into experiencing endless undulating visual journeys.

A native from Caracas, Venezuela, Gustin studied art with Luis Alvarez de Lugo, followed by an education in architecture in the Central University of Venezuela, and the Federico Brandt Institute of Art. As an artist and philosophy student, he probes the meaning of the art of our time in such courses as "Philosophical Problems of Abstract Art", and "Consciousness of Self in Art". In his most recently solo exhibition entitled "Espacio Interno - Paisajes del Alma" (Inner space - Journeys of the soul), Gustin was praised as "one of the most impressive talents present in the emerging art world of Venezuela, someone from whom we will extract the contribution of new metaphors for the future progress of symbolic imagery in Venezuelan Plastic Art".

By Diana Roberts, Manhattan Arts, page 8, Artists in the 1990,s. Winter 95. (December).

I only believe in the spot that says without saying...

Creation is a highly complex problem in which idea and emotion are indissoluble and in which semiotic is just an artifice trying to penetrate the pathless place of creation, providing us with comprehensible ways to explain what we do.
Once the concept is reached, the work loses all meaning. The concept only pretends to explain an idea commanded by the genesis, although it never comes near what the idea truly represents.

The artist is a sort of magician that has learned to use his skills in the depths of the unexpected, in that magnificent lead to the empty space towards other temporalities, towards other geographies that signal the path of the unknown, the experience that allows the construction of the work within the confrontation of masses of colors and shapes that fill the vital space. The work is a structure of organic character, that behaves as an entity, independent of its creator, allowing the construction at various levels: iconographic, significative, symbolic, thematic and formal, formulating, thus, the internal architecture of the pieces.

The work distinguishes itself for having a life of its own, behaving as entities which obey the rules of life, to be born, to live and to die, even though at times they are not allowed to die.

Color becomes tired, saturated, to, at certain times, be torned and enter other temporalities which describe other spaces; a figure that forms four temporalities for one space. The color dance to construct spaces that try to suggest other spaces, moving about as they please, as if there was an internal guide that drives the movements of the spots, a chaos in its own order, a chaos that distances itself from the fractionary.

Art must speak, impact, develop images, commentaries, misunderstandings, what is inert and indifferent implies death. I believe in the thesis of the no thesis, as a matter of fact, I do not pretend to explain absolutely anything, I do not intend to formulate an idea about anything and, when I do, I know I am wrong. The uncertainty signals the path, but I am convinced that painting, as a mean of expression, maintains its term and validity. The challenge does not lie on finding new mechanisms of expression, that set us apart from these who said something before us or even in the absurd myth of those who believe in the continuous innovation. The challenge lies in saying and speaking about the unspeakable, only this can save us, turning the work in to something completely sacred.

My work is only a trigger of a number of events derived from personal experiences, which after be seen, comes in contact with other experiences at which time the image is built. There is a point where experiences merge, in which each spectator constructs its own world over mine, sailing towards the steles of the interior of the "other".
I am only a detonator, that, when merged with other identities, generate the work, that is why there is not a subject in the development of my speech, and if it should ever appear it would only be an excuse for its development.
I recall the work of art as a box of senses, capable of simulating the essential trail of the cosmos, as a sacred plot in which each element becomes an evocation of the universe.

He who tries to explain it, attempts against its mystery and upon unveiling it, it would indefectively lead to death.
A stop to the prologue, ahead with the sensibility, a stop for adjetivation, ahead with creation.

I believe in nothing, only in art as a form of life...

Abraham Gustin.

The Sofia Imber Caracas Contemporary Art Museum and Pirelli de Venezuela open the III Salón Pirelli to offer the public the new trends proposal and tendencies of talented Venezuelan young artists. In diverse categories: Painting, sculpture, drawing-graphics, photography, video, among creative expressions.

Abraham Gustin who was part of the jury at the V Nuevo Mundo Israelita photography contest and author of the cover of Hagesher magazine in 1998 is one of the 54 artist selected for III Salon Pirelli of young artist where he presents the work "Kwan", To Observe, a pure conceptual work, that demonstrates his experience in abstract painting link to new artistic techniques which bring together drawing and the computer.

Once he graduated at the Herzl-Bialik Moral y Luces School, Gustin studied drawing at the Cristobal Rojas Visual Art School, drawing and painting at the studio of Luis Alvarez de Lugo, architecture at the Central University of Venezuela and Plastic Art at the Federico Brandt Art Institute.

The IV Art & Design exhibition (Caracas 1997); XXI and XXII Aragua National Art Salon (Maracay 1996 and 1997); the Fifth International Miniature Art Show (North Carolina 1996 and 1997); Contemporary Visions I and Contemporary Visions II (NewYork 1997), XVII Bijoux-Wizo Annual Art Salon (Caracas 1996) and the V and VII National Drawing Biennal (Caracas 1990 and 1994), are only a few of the spaces where he has showed his work in his 9 years of artistic trajectory that positions him as one of the new exponents of contemporary art in Venezuela.

- How to understand Abstract Painting?
- "It is a complex process. As an artist, I distance myself a lot form the theme that in my work of art. I'm not looking to tell a story or describe a fact. I merely focus myself in investigating a problem that has been fundamentally important in art history: color".

- What does color mean for you?
- "In painting there are very important elements, such as color, which in some cases breaks and tears intentionally. I believe that my paintings belong to another universe, my very personal universe, in which color allows me to distance the spaces that make up that universe. Of course, at some point, when it breaks, it allows me to jump to other dimensions inside my own painting, letting me develop a style around another element which is very important: space".

- Do you work solely abstract painting?
- My work has many tendencies, and, in this sense, it is very hard to get a panoramic view of my work through only one piece. For example, what I'm currently exhibiting at the Sofìa Imber Contemporary Art Museum (MACSI) is a conceptual work that distances itself a lot from painting, but that requires artistic skills as well.

- Which are the tendencies of your work?
- I work in paper, which is drawing; in canvas, which product is painting and I also make a more experimental work, more integrated towards the vanguard tendency, but even so, it maintains a link with the other too. For example, this new creative channel that I'm exhibiting at the MACSI was draw on the computer, but in order to do so, I first need to know how to draw, it doesn't matter if it is on paper or on the computer screen. I'm very clear on the fact that it obeys a more avant-guard way of thinking, but I don't believe in that. I don't believe in vanguards or in the fact that we are more vanguardists than a prehistoric man, for example, or a musician such as Bach or Mozart. Each one was a vanguardist at his time. The Renaissance was a great vanguard, and they called themselves modernists. We were the ones that invented the term Renaissance in order to call ourselves modern, from the XIX century till today. Now today, they don't know what to call us, so they calls us post-modern without realizing that the vanguard is everywhere, it is timeless.

- What are you looking for?
- In the area of painting, I'm exclusively dedicated to the research of color, It preoccupies me where it comes from, of course I know it has historical references, but in my work it has a more emotional approach rather than rational.

I don't begin from trying to picture a landscape, tell a story or an idea. No, not at all, I don't look for anything as a matter of fact and that is the starting point of my thesis, a little of uncertainty. It is a little bit like a search for new things, on storming waters, about things that are unexpected, about things that I'm not expecting from the product but from the process itself.

- For example?
- It is as if, for example someone starts dancing naked in a room and this along is her performance, but once it is over it will recorded in your memory as an experience, even though, you can not take that moment home with you. It is very different somewhat classical artist whom might say: "well I paint the work and here I have it", but in order to get to that painting there was also a process. In conclusion, it doesn't matter if it is a classic or a contemporary artist, there will always be a process.
The pictures taken of Picasso's Guernica by his wife Dora Maar, while the artist was working on it, capture those moments that later disappeared because the painting was a process itself until it was finish, and that is the part that I admire the most, and try to achieve. Of course, there is a product. The study of color, nothing more.

- But the product, not the process, is what you show the public?
- Yes, I would love to show it to the public, but I keep it for me, and it is what I feel that is the beauty of art. Paining or making art, has basically to do with this, loving an external situation that detaches from the product. It is a little bit like Salvador Dali said when they asked him: " What is painting for you?", and he answered: "It is a way of loving". I paint because I love art, nothing more. There isn't an underground reason for which you are an artist. It is the same as love, you may give a thousand reason why you love somebody and reach out to her or him, but emotionally there is something that commands you and that has nothing to do with reason.

- Is your art for a particular public?
- That is like talking about religious terms: the Bible is for everybody, but not everybody can access to it. The same happens with my work. They are not for a particular public, they're for absolutely everybody. However, depends how sensible you are or what insight you may achieve in order to understand it. That is way my work is written as keys, in a way that it may be a little complicated to understand it.

Art comes to you, as you become more sensible. Many artists say that art isn't even for a specific public, they say it is only for artists, and that is very sad, because if that is so, what is art for? This statement does not explain it. It would make no sense. The idea is to tell people: look, here I am, this is me.

- Can you talk about the work at the Salon of Young Artists at the MACSI?
- The museum invited young artists, younger than 35, to explore the subject of Profound field vision and around 200 people replied, from which 54 were selected to exhibit. The essence of the subject was the act of a observing, and my proposal consisted in integrating the idea of the oriental and occidental way of observing in one work

The format of the proposal, that is the way in which the pieces are distributed in space, is a hexagram from the I Ching which corresponds to the ideogram Kwan that resume the idea of observation. This hexagram is constituted by six lines: two yang lines (closed), and four yin lines (opened), set in parallel.

Each line has its meaning: the first one is a man who observes, the second one talks about observing as someone that spies, the third one is observing reality, the fourth one is observing the light of the kingdom, the fifth one is observing life itself, and the sixth one is observing other lives. As you may understand, it all implies profound interpretations.

The format of the work gives the name to the piece, that is the form of the hexagram has itself a meaning that to the eyes of a connoisseur of the Chinese culture and specially of the I Ching it is easy to read its meaning and associated the idea of observing. To link it with the idea of the observation, as known to the occidental culture, I present in each of the lines that compose the hexagram a front plate with human body tissue, as seen through microscopic light, This image have been drawn on and intervened in the computer in order to give the an interesting plastic composition.

I have invested much more time in this work than in my paintings. You have to draw on the computer, then print, then scan and print again in photographic copies. We are definitely in front of a work of an enormous integration of a diversity of processes in order to produce one final piece.

- With this new technique, Do you close one stage and begin another?
- I believe that painting will always be present in my work. I am really a painter, therefore my experimental work will not distance me at all from my commitment to painting. For me, the work on paper and canvas are not close roads, but parallel routes to an expression, that evidently nurture each other.

- Would you set you work in a specific movement?
- To describe pictorial work is a huge compromise. To set the work in a movement and not allow the artist to finish developing himself within his life, as it is the case with my work, would be a hypocrisy. You will only be able to clearly describe my work fifty years later. Being more specific, this means that you can make certain important approaches when you know the development process of my work totally and that will only be possible in time. For example, one of my paintings may seem to you as abstract expressionism, but not all my painting are the same. I particularly stay away from descriptions and adjectives, I prefer an art with no adjectives, in order to allow the approach to the process.

I believe that most of all I trigger the process. In order for you to get an idea, is like the poet who sings out a line of the poem, the effectiveness of the feeling contained in that line depends on how you receive it and how sensible you are. In order to experiment intensely. I can not do the work of the voyeur, of the one that watches. It depends on him or her how interesting the connection may be between him and the work that the artist is trying to express. In this sense the voyeur can say: Oh, how interesting!, and make the connection, or he can simply pass by one of my paintings and completely ignore it. Many times when a dialogue is not established between the work and the spectator, it is impossible to leap inside. To conclude, I believe that art is really produced in an equidistant point between the work and the observer. The point where the explosion really occurs and it is translated into the emotion produced by the work, but that definitely depends not only on the quality of the proposal but also on the sensibility of the one that sees it.

Nuevo Mundo Israelita Newspaper, Section: Values, Page 13.
Caracas, November 10th to 17th 1997. By Carla Murciano.

(Based on "Dreaming Roads" by Francisco Morales Padrón).

There are cities in America with names like Puerto de la Cruz, Mérida or Valencia. Venezuela, the small Venice, is a country of palafitte in the lake of Maracaibo. Also in Europe there is more than one Venice and more than one Rome. The new Rome of the golden century did not take place in Italy, but in Seville a city that Rodrigo Caro missed dearly in XVIII- in which street I was born. A scholar and erudite man, linked to the intellectual crowd of the painter Pacheco, and a humanist as Menéndez Pelayo described it when he says: "He to whom an almost fatal inspiration made him a poet in the only way he could be it": ancient times, the classic world.

Because of this relationship two types of natives from Valencia are borned, sister city, by the way, of Seville each one with its double transatlantics in the remote continent of longing.

I lived my childhood in the Santa Cruz neighborhood among the "infinite sunsets contemplated from the rooftop" and "the image of a magnolia tree, that attracted Cernuda so much. For him those were the images of life. The poet longed to be as that old and narrow tree, to live apart from everything, bloom without witnesses and be consumed by its own candor, giving pure flowers".

A life that my father was able to contemplate in his youth, similar to the flower from the tree, when the wall that held it crumble on him at the Callejón del Agua, and suddenly a group of magnolias appeared before him with an overwhelming presence.

Maybe, Abraham, my otherness which corresponds to the other place of which I know nothing, except that its people talk like open palm trees, would also live the extended warmth of those still sunsets and would breath the same kind air that Cernuda did on his Mexican death, longing of he who received death by surprise on another city "...as not breathed by others yet" said the poet.

My last name is Dopazzo and in the city where I come from, the natives from Gallice were marked with the Jewish star of their dark shirts. Even the most modest man from Seville could buy the harshest of all professions and bare on his back the weight that he wasn't supposed to carry. Those lives went away in other's trunks, belonging to those who come and go in the busy train stations.

A trip through the air from rooftop to rooftop and from one Santa Cruz to another brought me here, to this city "that can only live openly and truthfully", said Cioranescu, and because of love I became a native here. Before me, another Serafin from Gallice became Argentinean and he remains there, dissolved and fragile because he couldn't find a son that would bear his memory.

Twenty years ago, being in Seville I greeted at the airport Don Francisco Morales Padrón. I was very excited. He was waiting to fly to Canarias with a bouquet of yellow roses for his mother, the one who Miguel Angel Asturias, poet and novelist preferred, "a man who did not disown any of his blood". I was with my mother and Cirilo Leal in whose soul I was reflected and who lives currently under the protection of the rumorous god of the bees, the god of steel, who also discovered for us this deep and intellectual man from Canarias, with a well known American vocation, Don Francisco.

Today it is Abraham Gustin who comes from his trip from the other part of the world, he has come to meet the twin souls that he has scattered at the archipelago.

Without knowing, he's staying at Tacoronte, the place where Rome stayed for a season, invited by the also painter Oscar Dominguez. She was a Polish pianist who would later be murdered by the Nazis. It brings memories of the classic Rome, but not of the white and Latin stone, but of the analphabet neighborhood in which saints and poets got lost. It is probably that Abraham in some other time had made this trip but the other way around and had founded there a new American Rome as clear as the premonition that runs through Gustin and that he paints, timeless.

November 1998. By Serafin Dopazzo. Quotes by Francisco Morales Padrón.

It is common that in the making of an art catalog, someone is asked to write about the impossible: what is in the artist's mind when he or she creates and, worse, about the work itself. In a few words to talk about the unspeakable.

I won't dare to talk about my own work, because I definitely don't try to say anything with my paintings. I'd rather talk about creation, the history of painting and the ups and downs that grew around those who did or tried to do something with expression.

on roads without roads

The roads open a window to this exhibition. Something appears with which to start writing this text, even though I hope to fail in this attempt, making possible that the image triumphs over words.

Something: roads, out-of-focus words as if these were uncertain of sounding with too much strength in a sea of color.

I walk towards the doors and windows of submerged towns, towards the highways of a hidden view, of a lost intelligence. These are deserted streets, which lead to nowhere, which throw us into views from other times, into places we don't know but towards which we feel a certain intuition. Doorways that come near a new way of seeing.

Cities that have never been seen, never been visited, without real time or space. Places we store in our memory. Cities that belong to everyone and no one, cities from which we come and go, as drifters, sure of an encounter.

Lately, I see color squares, which unite and break to open new spaces. Maybe these are windows to a thought that continuously tries to follow itself. Windows that are tear apart to open doors to new realities.

Meanwhile, I go over and over the same ideas, without knowing why. I try to reach the footprints of my thoughts. It is like as an obsession. submerged towns, discovered roads that promise a new landscape, I don't know if a better one. Deserted leaves, ladders without a destiny, seas and sounds, dreams of someone who is dreaming us.

The image as a word, the word as a line, the line as a shape, the shape as a thought. But between a thought and a line there is only a look, a view, which builds the idea of the indefinable or, at least, leaves it naked. I'm left with no words, without a name to build the image.

I keep walking. The strength of my ideas doesn't make me stop. Hidden ladders that suddenly stop in front of improvised walls of color, to immediately open up to unknown territories. That's the point were the thought of my paintings and my work really begins, among the middle grounds of all possibilities, which at some point a new possible reality, without me being aware.

I go back to the hidden view and bring out of the submerged towns the possibility of keep walking without explaining anything or almost nothing. I want to make the inexplicable understandable, I want to say what hasn't been said, but I can merely draw the idea in my mind. Words after words, touch after touch, colors on top of colors. The touches of a brushstroke, in which I still believe. Open windows, without frames, like a small hole.

Openly and without shame these windows are built, guiding us to intimacy, making colors walk towards us and tells us something, maybe shouting at us, maybe whispering and making us believe that they really exist, that they are real.

Once again, I don't want to play the game of speaking about what I can't. I want to feel without words and to look with colors, to leave behind the roads of the day to day and escape to lost worlds. I want to discover in a hidden look the submerged towns.

Abraham Gustin