Aigua
Luis González Ansorena
Not for whoever is positively befooled by the trivial shouting of post-modernity nor for whoever is in a hurry or understands art as a “Sunday entertainment”. All art, true art, reveals while it hides something, for, as Goethe said, in art we always find mystery.
In a clear space, almost circular in its strict squareness, Sampol offers us a series of works that will seem unconnected to the hasty spectator: painting, composition, print, lithography, drawing, installation, photographs… although there is a connecting thread to be discovered that I will not reveal, because art is not complete until the spectator has been involved and made an effort. However, I can say, generally, that the attentive observer will see rigour, precision. Strict order; exact forms, very far removed from expressionism, as subjectivist as the formal objectivity of converted post-art, as D. Kuspit has said, on the scaffolding of triviality.
Here there is no pretension of geniality, of impact, of surprise. Because Sampol’s works are exquisitely produced forms and technique –techniques– inspired or rather modelled, or pregnant with ideas; the idea of the human, the social, the amorous, dialogue, in harmony with nature, with the feminine…; and slowly and laboriously brought to life, with supreme respect for the things that, as is known, are entities that while they reveal, hide the Being. In their attempt to make life transparent they preserve the final mystery. Neither do we find here the well-worn aesthetic ugliness that insists on tiresomely announcing what we already know: that the world is going down the tube.
Sampol’s way of protesting is to show us beauty: the beauty of jacaranda seeds, the beauty of precarious structures in Mali, the beauty of clothes hung up to dry, the beauty of a red feminine sea populated by women who have left an enormous impression in their wake, perhaps too well concealed, of intelligence and pain. The pain that Sampol shows us, behind the beauty, by the destruction of nature, by the interminable suffering of the refugees, by the sad reality of Africa, by the unheard screams of the tortured…
I am afraid that, finally, I have revealed some of that connecting thread I mentioned. Well, the title of the exhibition also tells us something. It does not matter. True art is winding; it is full of nooks and crannies. One must visit them at one’s own speed. Finally, true art, as Oriental aesthetics well knows, leaves a certain resonance, a certain residue, an aroma –rassa in Sanscrit–.
So then. Look. Look. Look. And take a little of that great resonance home with you.
Mallorca, 2017