Title: Reading Duville Author: Adriano Pedrosa Place and date: São Paulo, 2010. Published in the book Matías Duville, Esto fue otro lugar.
Moscas y copo, 2008, charcoal on paper, 150 x 260 cm, is a fine example of a drawing by Matías Duville. In it, a net is depicted attempting to capture hundreds of flies in mid-air. All the elements are drawn in black against a vast, mostly untouched background. The net itself is more precisely drawn, its rigid frame more so than the fabric of the net, which appears to be a smudge of gray but is in fact a very thin grid of vertical and horizontal lines. The flies in turn are more imprecise, even impressionistic: they too are composed of lines, but these are drawn in different directions, all departing rather erratically from a central point, as if they were the result of successive and forceful tracings made throughout the surface of the paper. The flies vary in size; some are much larger than others, and one is unsure if their actual (or represented) size in fact varies, or if the difference in scale is due to their relative distances from the artist’s (or the viewer’s) eyes. What is of interest here is how a series of elemental, straightforward almost crude drawing gestures –forceful traces of countless lines on paper that at times resemble frottage– may be articulated, composed in order to eloquently represent numerous flies, a thick cloud of them; as if the repetition of the most simple gesture with minimal means (black charcoal, paper, traces) could capture and represent a delicate, fleeting scene; pure, thin, light and abstract lines and traces forming the lightest of all living creatures, at least those visible to the naked eye. Duville often uses one image or scene many times, making small changes and reworking it, and thus variations of the scene reappear in different works over a certain period. The cloud of flies is one such example; it has appeared in at least eight other works to date, Hatch Iand II, Moscas y Copos I, II and III, and Flies, all produced in 2007, some accompanied by the net, which at times is simply lying on the floor, others without it, where the flies dominate the entire picture. The cloud of flies reveals the artist’s interest in juxtaposing and contrasting the micro and the macro –the dozens or hundreds of flies, on the one hand, and the thick, large cloud, on the other. The cloud of flies assumes an all-over-ness that evokes the dripped paintings of Jackson Pollock, with their poured, abstract lines composing a dense, organic net. In this sense, the flies take on an abstract quality –pure trace, drawing, and charcoal on paper– that underlies the tension between abstraction and representation, process and figure that is found in the work.
Scratch, 2009, charcoal on paper, 250 x 150 cm, is an unusual work in the context of the drawings by Duville. Not only is it vertical (whereas most of Duville’s drawings are horizontal), but it is also the only one where the artist has used nothing but the color purple (the drawings are often made in black, at times with one or two other colors, sometimes in fact purple, but none of them are monochromatic in a color other than black). The image in this drawing, although unique (only one example exists to date), is typically Duvillean: a large scale parallelepiped object sits upright at the center of the drawing. It is made of organic matter, perhaps wood or soil. A section of the object has been eaten up, carved or eroded; only a small section is left at the center of the parallelepiped, allowing the object, whatever it might be, to stand whole, united, upright though in a seemingly precarious, fragile equilibrium –a strong gush of wind might knock it over, breaking its integrity. As we now see it, the large object, a fanciful ruin, is also the picture of a sculptural wonder –the material must support, through a thin, small sliver, the entire weight of the world above it. In this sense, the Duvillean object brings to mind Broken Obelisk (1963-1969) by Barnett Newman (1905-1970), an important sculpture in the history of US modern art; a 7.5-meter-high phallic symbol, the work is a true testament to the country’s mid-century male megalomania. What Duville picks up on in the Broken Obelisk is its precarious, fragile equilibrium and the play between negative and positive space. Here, these classical concerns of sculptural form are translated into full and empty space, drawn and undrawn paper on the surface of the drawing. The background terrain, which is barely drawn and undrawn paper on the surface of the drawing. The background terrain, which is barely drawn with light touches of oil stick paint to compose a landscape, suggests a wasteland. The Duvillean subject matter or territory is never historically or geographically specific; one cannot speak of a certain city or country, a certain moment in time or space, of north or south, of this world or another. Yet there is often a certain mood or tone, an accent or climate in the works which give them their distinct character. Here, it is a fantastic, post-apocalyptic atmosphere, depicted in all its wonder; the almighty purple ruin stands alone. And the gloomy, nostalgic and melancholic atmosphere recalls a certain literary tradition and psychological climate of the artist’s own Buenos Aires, a city that supposedly contains the largest population of psychotherapists anywhere in the world. Here, we find once again the Duvillean play between micro and macro, where tiny elements stand beside immense ones –the phallic and the fragile, the monumental and precariously upright ruin next to small bits and pieces scattered on the ground surrounding the represented object in a large-scale drawing. Esto fue otro lugar, 2009, charcoal on paper, 150 x 235 cm, is an ominous work. On the one hand, it can be seen as an example of one of Duville’s liquid drawings; on the other, it can be understood in the larger context of the series of wastelands, disastrous and exploded landscapes, catastrophic and post-catastrophic, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic scenes found throughout the artist’s drawings. Such works accentuates the delicate or subtle tones of the melancholic or gloomy scenes, steering the viewer into much darker pictures.
Esto fue otro lugar is one of the most radical and tragic of such works –a tidal wave or a hurricane engulfs the scene, subverting the very edge or line that draws the distinction between land, sea and sky. Caught between deep crater and violent tumultuous sea or thunderstorm, the work holds many characters; it leaves unresolved the true nature of the towering phenomenon that, in black and white, rises threatening from the surface –of the ground or the sea or the skies. Where are the edges of land and of sea, of mountain and of water? Again, the work plays with the micro and macro, a feature that in the Argentine tradition can be traced back to the theatrical paintings of Guillermo Kuitca; this is particularly true of Esto fue otro lugar. Looking at Otro lugar today, the scene inevitably recalls (or anticipates) the recent devastating Tsunami that struck the Northeastern coast of Japan on March 11, 2011, a disaster that was recorded and communicated through the media and endless footage uploaded on Youtube. If there is a battle between nature and culture, in the Duvillean world or in our own, the former defeats the latter. The fabulous and fantastic, the formally intricate and elaborate, the borders, traces and lines in the drawing, all become painfully prescient.
Corte, 2010, charcoal on paper, 150 x 230 cm, is a fantastic wasteland panorama, an underwater liquid drawing. As the title suggests, what is seen is a section (in the original Spanish, corte) of a sea or waterbed, where ghastly, densely drawn fish swim with their mouths wide open, hungry hunters in a depleted scenario, ready to devour whatever they encounter. The submarine underworld is intricately depicted with a multitude of organic elements, perhaps constitutive parts of the seabed itself, perhaps pieces of wood or algae. All of them seem to be contaminated by pollution from the world above. Symptomatically, a dark film covers the surface of the water, possibly the accumulation of an oily substance that has been spilled or leaked into the sea, preventing the sun from reaching the seabed. Nevertheless, since the density of the dirty film is uneven, here and there the oily substance thins out, allowing the sun to reach sections of the water, illuminating the otherwise somber underwater world. Illumination in this case is formally close to erasure –as the sun hits the fish or the algae it in fact rubs them out of the surface of drawing.
Screen, 2009, charcoal on paper, 263 x 150 cm, is another irresolvable Duvillean scene that dissolves the borders and questions the lines between masses of land, sky and water. A small empty canoe is depicted entering into an immense dark pipeline; the canoe is made smaller, more frail and solitary by the huge, towering circle of dark matter that is about to engulf it. Once again we encounter familiar Duvillean motifs: the play between scale (micro and macro), the triumph of nature over culture (or mankind). As with other works, it is difficult to ascertain the materiality of the elements represented in the scene, in this case, what the dark swirling matter is actually made of –perhaps it is the stuff of swamps or mossy terrain. If there are elements that droop down from the inner circle like vegetation from a tree, the canoe below navigates through the same matter, which therefore must be liquid. Perhaps the white spots that are left blank in the outer circle are levels or stops along the steep mountainous terrain or, perhaps, they are foam produced by the violent liquid pipeline. On the other hand, the title of the work leads us in another direction: screen (the original title in English) evokes the cinematic, photographic, digital or projected image. Yet, the oval image at the center recalls a mirror onto which our own reflection may be cast –onto a screen. Indeed, the oval is the size of an adult human body, and thus the empty canoe may very well stand for the viewer himself entering into the dark, unknown and uncertain territory that one is inescapably thrown into when Reading Duville.