Series 03: Bi-Tridimensional dialectics, 1980-1981

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Series 03: Bi-Tridimensional dialectics, 1980-1981

I rounded off the previous series with a painting in which the white was the untouched fabric (though previously sealed on the back) framed by a yellow plane. Here I approached the concepts Malevich expounded in his painting White on white, as I painted two vertical lines in white on the white fabric. Dramatically, I had been left “with no paint to paint”, with the fabric untouched and host of concepts to explore.

In this series, the only paint I used was the color white, white canvases of different thicknesses, many of them transparent, white lacquered wood … and two basic concepts, one being the pure transparency of the fabric or paper in opposition to the saturation of the material (layers and layers of sandpapered white paint) and the other, the construction of the tri-dimension from the bi-dimension. In other words, my fi rst sculpture was a simple wooden stretcher of the sort used for painting, with fabric tensed on it on both sides, one of them saturated with paint and a small circular incision to enable the interior space of the sculpture to communicate with its exterior space. My intention was to construct a sculpture–tridimension– with the same object normally used for a painting– bi-dimension–and to relate interior and exterior space.

Around that time, interest in the works of Basque sculptors Oteiza and Chillida, and some profound analyses and theoretical studies of the concepts of space and the neutral, added even more emphasis to my burgeoning curiosity about the conceptual and minimalist world. Most of the works were executed on transparent or thick fabrics on stretchers, painted, or not painted, white; many are of white lacquered Much of what I wanted to do in this series was left undone, even as line drawings, of simple, often geometric forms in space. Another project that never saw the light of day and which I regret not getting done is a sculpture in “Homage to Rothko”, whichwould have involved placing at certain calculated distances vertical planes of stretched white canvas fabrics with selected degrees of transparency.