Travel and island

Crossing the threshold that led to the island, he did not allow himself to know anything beyond what he had achieved up to that point in the journey. Through the frame/door at the entrance to the next plane, the painter met the extraordinary image of a world opening before his gaze. He remembered then that the distance that separated him from understanding the plastic quality of the setting was proportional to that of the thin but firm line separating the hero-painter from his picture-object. When he looked back at the magic place spread out before him, he felt able to understand what was passing. At that very moment and convinced of his power, he knew that the idea was once again only an illusion of his sensitive mind. When he looked out again, the place had already vanished. The path had to continue to be his space of experience.

"As in dream", writes Joseph Campbell, "the images range from the sublime to the ridiculous. The mind is not permitted to rest [...] but is continuously [...] shocked out of the assurance that now, at last, it has understood". The plastic work "is defeated when the mind rests."(1)

With the rhythm of each brush stroke on the canvas, the narrator knows that the circumstances of his relationship with the picture vary incessantly with the brush strokes and the changes in tone, light and form. The distance is made greater or smaller. In its incessant change, the piece is interpreted like the steps on the path in the picture's journey. Each of the painter's sensations regarding the search in the plastic arts is formulated in image. The pictures in this exhibition depict the various states on the journey and on the island. By ignoring this poetic relationship between painting, its process of execution and the resulting latent state between the plastic arts and the represented image, we find that their character steers our attention towards the telling of a story as universal as that of the hero searching for the truth.

Analysing the literary narrative of the hero and his quest, we find different states or phases; following the announcement of the journey, and once the character is on his path, the key events include a process in which he is annihilated or dies. This is followed by a phase of reconstruction, and the culmination of the search, varying according to the parameters of assessment. These phases are developed in by Joseph Campbell (2) in his work on myths in different cultures. But I would like to stop to reflect on the fluctuating differentiation and connection between the final result of the hero's journey and the idea of this hero in the representation of the pictures in my project. In literature, we find great and very different examples of hero figures with quest tales. The motives for these crusades are as different as the adventures or events. Their journeys trace the description of what is obtained in the final encounter. Likewise, in my pictures I represent both the space of the journey, situations in the blank space, and moments experienced in the place at which the goal is achieved, the island and the places within it. Returning to the literary character, we know that the search is successful. And even when it is not, it is because of circumstances of the hero's destiny, because we know that the final prize exists. Yet the plastic traveller moves within the ambiguity of not knowing of the encounter with the prize.

This prize in the plastic of my pictures, is unashamedly announced in the depictions of the island, without losing sight of the fact that the experience of the journey is in itself a form of success. The difference with regard to the literary character, lies in the prize/place "island", since its presence in the pictures is the result, and therefore the idealised representation of the place created by the traveller figure's symbolic mind.

In the same way as in the most arduous process in executing an object-picture through the channel of art, where the purpose of the processing-searching is to make it work properly, we find that this operation is ultimately not achieved. Having said this, we understand that part of the function of art is the unfulfilled quest. In other words, one becomes aware of the rules of the game of art, where it does not end but is instead realised.

The same rules apply to the final response of the representations of the island and therefore of the path to it. Thus, basing ourselves on the instructions of the game and its application to the events recounted in the narratives of my pictures, when the hero appears to enter the island, it turns out to be an illusion and he storms the reality of the path with the blank space – a space in formation with limited spatial references. The poetic element of this narrated idea of art should not put us off our desire to search; on the contrary, it is part of the creator's learning process. The narration advances through different states or dimensions represented in this project.

Before the journey (the frontiers of the plastic arts)

It is at this point that the author, with his symmetry in the represented character, becomes aware of the path he is going to take. The pictures corresponding to this part depict the active attitude of the characters. They respond to intuitive stimuli and the stimuli of experiencing sensations that enable "routes to be drawn" for an entrance into the game. One example of the "before" is "integral 7A+" (Picture 1). It shows the triplicated image of a palm tree which acts as an instrument of dimensional entrance to the path. Above the palm trees and acting as a form of sequence, we see the image of the character; he looks at the palm tree and climbs it, reaches the crown and reflects... and jumps!

The path

Through his aesthetic experiences, the hero proceeds through his adventure until he reaches the thickness of the non-image, the "guardian of the blank"(Picture 1). This is the entrance to the zone. The representations along the path show the painter figure and other artists also in transhumance. The protagonists advance, addressing the different tests with which they approach, move away from, and jump in the space-time from one route another of distance from the island. Mikhail Bakhtin(3) drew our attention to the categories of time and space in a literary work – in this case we apply it to the picture. Referring to the idea of "chronotopes", he includes signs where time and space cannot be disassociated but form a single unit. The journey is the nucleus of the chronotope. It is the chronotope around which other smaller ones revolve — the path and the island.

These chronotopes have a precise and defined object: the search for the required object, the island, the picture. The island has no definite location, but belongs to the essence of each plastic experience. We should not forget that the telling of the journey is also the telling of the pictorial act or of the plastic act of the object.

The Entrances to the Island

"When the woman reached the animal's stomach, she saw large forests and great rivers, and many high lands; on one side there were many rocks; and there were many people who had built their village there; and many dogs and many cattle; all was there inside the elephant."(4)

As in the creative process there are boundaries where the connection between background and figure precedes the act; it is at this point that the character gains access through one of the entrances to the island; be it by land, air, sea or through the magic mirror. The reflected experience of the act representing the entrances, leads us to find different routes in the path that belong to the entrance. This is where the sub-levels of the entrances arise. They are parts of the entrance as much as they are as of the path or the island. They are symbolic representations on decision-making in the process of the picture; they are dialogues of power between object and subject.

One example of entrance and sub-level are the two works presented that refer to this section: "Ciervo del desierto" [Desert deer] and "Txemi acuático" [Aquatic Txemi] (Picture 3,4). In the first we see the plastic image of a picture in which a well in the central space is protected by the forest itself. The place is an area on the island. In this case, the well represents what is on the other side of the entrance.

In the second picture we see a depiction of a sea pool surrounded and contained by rocky volumes inhabited by animal and plant life. In this case, the pool is the inner path of the entrance to the island. If we look at the bottom of the picture we can see a smaller rock pool, similar in volume to the well in the previous picture. One might say that in the process of executing the work, the volume appeared and fostered the reflection that, beyond the marine setting there is an internal sub-level and maybe more; everything depends on the creative process.

Experience on the island

The time on the island is momentary but it is also retained in the representation. These are instants for learning and continuing the journey to the picture and to the island. In this case they are in fact experiences on the island. The island is in itself a set of many realities; it is the place for the painter and for others. The encounter with the other is the encounter with complicity, the connection of perceptions, but it is also the encounter of the rivalries, of the struggle; Writing about Apollonius of Rhodes "Argonautika", he defines it as: "the semiotic space outside which even the mere existence of semiosis is impossible" (5) Analysing the situation that arises on the island of Lemnos in Apollonius' work, we see that there is a semiosphere comprised by the Lemnian women who take fright when they spot the Argo (the ship) and prepare to defend themselves. If we compare this situation with my project we could say that the Lemnian women are the island itself. At the same time, it is the semiosphere of the Argonauts in search of a place to stop off for the night; the travelling painters. Each semiosphere or character deploys its own mechanisms: for the Lemnians, the travellers are foreigners invading their territory, their space and their identity. In contrast, for the heroes, the otherness is represented by that moment of unfamiliarity. As Lotman says "the crossing point of the boundary of a given culture depends upon the position of the observer"(6). In order to understand what happens in the moment of experience, we need to think about what we know of the picture and what the picture knows about us (the author and the spectator); therefore to what extent our languages mix, cross over, respect or collide, impose, the voices are silenced... "... the semiotic border is the sum of the bilingual translation filters" passing through which the text is translated into another language (or other languages) that are outside a given semiosphere". (7)

The character's camouflage masks

Using camouflage masks, the painter projects himself outside his physical body, to view his image in the surroundings of his action as a creator of pictures. In this very suggestive way, the author can understand his own image as a spectator. The painter realises that his self-portrait or traced presence implicitly and inevitably means speaking of its symmetry. In the incident with the camouflage, there is a need for a dream, for a child hero in which the character builds himself a protective shell before which he can neither control nor possess — the work of art in itself. In the link between background and figure, therefore, there arises the image and its traced presence.

The character does battle in the struggle of symbolic elements of identity where the identification of the painter as predominant is always present. Leaving to one side the clichés, it is the small details that tell us of his image. One of the primary purposes is not to close the narration, but so that the spectator identifies the human despite the disguise. In the same way, the painter is also an explorer, hunter, navigator, rider, knight, Robinson Crusoe, pirate, animal or in a certain way, the object and subject of the landscape. In these camouflage-masks, we find the same problem of representing the subject. In its elements we do not find the classical clichés that we would encounter in the carnival disguises, where the idealised form goes beyond the internal semblance of the person who is actually the subject. It is more his context than his outfit that identifies him as such.

In the case of the animal depiction, we see that this also corresponds to the painter's symmetry. But in this case, the animal is related to the more primitive, intuitive, perceptive part of the subject. The same layers or semblances are not involved in this figure as in the human one. At the same time, in many cases, the animal accompanies the human in the representation. It is in these cases that the otherness of the two images corresponds to the interpretations of the narration. In the painter's dividing format of symmetry, we can interpret different actions and decisions taken; instinct–argument, perception-knowledge, primary-social condition... A clear example of this game can be seen in the work "Punto de mira" [Viewpoint] in which we see the two images of the painter; as the man/hunter in one; and as the animal/fox in the other. The space in which they stand can be identified with respect to the totality of the project, as a stop off on the path before crossing the threshold to the island. If we analyse each one's attitude to the event, we see how the hunter, protected and detained by the plant feature, reflects on what is happening. From the top of the flowerpot on which he stands, he seeks to reach power without yet advancing towards his destination. The fox, on the other hand, responding to its primary instinct, continues moving forward gradually towards the next plane of representation. There is not much distance between the two characters, but it is there, in that play of minimums, that the difference lies.

A stop on the path

This show is a stop on the path, a point more of identification than of reflection. The narration continues, the journey goes on.

Iker Serrano

1 Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces (New World Library, 2008), p. 231

2 Ibid.

3 Bakhtin, Mikhail. "Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel. Notes toward a Historical Poetics" in The dialogic imagination: four essays by Mikhail Mikhaĭlovich Bakhtin, Michael Holquist (University of Texas Press, 1982)

4 Callaway, Henry, Nursery Tales and Traditions of the Zulus (London, 1868 ), p. 331

5 Lotman, Yuri. La semiósfera. Semiótica de la cultura y del texto.(Cátedra. 1996) p. 24, Quoted by María Florencia Magriñá,( literaturaviajeyutopia.blogspot.com )

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid.