top of page

Before the Nigth

By Ana Martinez Quijano

Curatorial Text III Biennale del fin del mundo, Ushuaia 2011

 “Man shall not quite be lost, but saved who will;” J. Milton Lost Paradise Third Book.

With its powerful imagery, artists dive deeply into things, they face an ocean of vicissitudes in reach of an objective which is usually uncertain, to overcome the lack of certainty, the consubstantiated feelings to the permanent and the inevitable desire to explore uncharted paths. Because of these reasons there are art pieces, which allow us to discover the universe from unimagined perspectives.

It is the dawn of a new century and   the art of Andres Paredes beats with the same pulsion as that of nature. His works have arrived into the ice territory and they evolve with the same rhythm than that of the forest where it was born. The swarm of light and shadows form a prodigious figure, Paredes gestates his work at the threshold of realism, and his pieces arouse imprecise evocations.

A huge dark butterfly mimics with the colors of a lonesome warehouse. A hangar of the extreme argentine south. Its wings float as a bad omen in the gloom of an ever-changing world that is self-destructive.

The lines that draw the wings flow without pause and acquire an oceanic dimension, as if the work recovers strength from the ornamental excess of it ondulations. Then the watermark, which projects the shadow, is a peculiarity: that confirms a presence, which becomes odd far from its origin: a land dipped in sun.

The butterfly rocks, as if getting ready to fly. She does not know how she arrived there neither her flight plan but her instinct awakens its memory. Remembrances of a past, already remote, lush regions with red colored earth. There are flowers and perfumes, which enhance the senses.  It is there where the imagination of our artist nests and growths: and to where it should go back. An atavistic impulse sets the urgency to return to that legendary place, although today it is also degraded.

The black butterfly in its extense trip crossed fields where the asphodels grow. A grey brummed space with inclined branches towards the sole. According to mythology spirits that are not judged as good or bad will always wander through the Styx fields. The bad should depart to a place of sorrow and eternal condemnation and it is only the good ones that will arrive to the Champs Elisee, a place for heroes, where spirits live in happiness.

In an eternal night that we already guess, art explores paths that can lead us to untouched landscapes. So while the world attends to the metamorphosis of the planet, our artist designs a poetic devise: a butterfly that can still perceive the path that will lead her to paradise.

bottom of page