The human being and his or her environment. A grand theme that, paradoxically, sums up the emphasis in Viviana Gaitán's work. Nature, all of it, the container of humankind, the immediate, captured through a language with a solid formal and conceptual basis in early 20th-century German Expressionism, which she subsequently exploits and splinters, impacting a host of aesthetic manifestations. A body of work that maintains coherence between its foundation—where these guidelines are projected in the work's structure—and where, beyond the clear fluctuations involved in producing and working over time and its conditions, it maintains a common thread that allows us to recognize the individualized creative presence resulting from assimilation and reworking.

The presence of the other, of the reference that serves as inspiration and debate, is made manifest: Susan Rothenberg, through her figurative imagery, the play of light and color, man forming a unity with nature. The fragmented representation, the vital, hurried, passionate brushstroke that resonates in the artist's work and echoes in her own work; layer upon layer, making and denying, remaking. Giuseppe Penone's tree trunks: that man-trunk that recurs in Viviana's work, where each crack in that surface correlates with the ruptures present in man's being. Once again, fragmentation. The multifaceted nature of Anselm Kiefer, the presence of pain, the versatility of materials, the palette, the possibility of manifesting in the work a type of expressionism that has much to do with poetry and the work of Paul Celan, another important reference in poetry.Consulting, looking at, and dialoguing with the works of others to construct one's own discourse merely accepts, once again, that fragmentation from which one cannot escape. The passions, the drama, the terribilitá of a Michelangelo, modeled on the Romantics, the Expressionists, the Neo-Expressionists, combined with a craftsmanship that places the canvas in constant tension. Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly, Georg Baselitz; the list is endless. The freedom of brushstrokes, the use of materials as a means and sometimes as an end, collage, the defiance of limits. And since these have not been a novelty for decades, this is where the challenge for the contemporary artist arises: to rework them so that they are not an obvious transfer.

The sloppiness of the consciously uncontrolled gesture, the restricted and subtle or violent and contrasting palette, the presence of introspection, the manifest error, the pentimento in the foreground, the play of opposites, the abstraction that imposes itself on a figure struggling to be seen, or conversely, disintegrating into transparencies, the intensities that converge explosively, generating a new stage, always in conflict with expressiveness itself, the imposing presence of the plane. Viviana Gaitán says she paints to know. And I believe that the best thing a work of art can have is to generate precisely that prior ignorance that provokes uncertainty in the viewer—and in the artist themselves—a desire to find some kind of communication between them and the work, which does not necessarily share that same reality, and its understanding is not always feasible. And knowledge is revealed through doing, or at least through the attempt. The artist finds by doing, feels it, flows, something happens that provokes this constant doing, which is not exhausted in a response, otherwise no one would paint or sculpt again after their first work because everything would be answered. In Viviana's work, there is little space to delimit what is recognized from the pure stain.However, everything is combined with subtle moments of rationalization that channel that expressionist passion. The works have concepts, they have ideas, they have foundations, even when the lack of foundation seems to be the golden rule: that is another way of grounding.

 

Setting up the work table, choosing the elements and materials, establishing formal communication between the parties, and thinking about what will be done—these are all steps that coexist with the arrival at the canvas and the emergence of the "uncontrollable."The concept of the fragmented self refers to the splitting of the self, typical of the postmodern era, where everything suggests the need to recognize oneself in the other and to enable the possibility of multiplicity as a sine qua non for survival. The age of communication only continues to multiply and fragment us. The 21st-century artist is already accustomed to these imperatives.What's interesting is how a work of art, through the most traditional language of painting—amidst the discursive variety offered by contemporary art—and supported by a style like Expressionism, with a high semantic and historical charge that must be mastered, manages to adapt to the expressive needs of the artist to create a work that harmonizes with its historical peers but still has its own identity, although also fragmented, of course. Fragments, expression, textures, color, gesture, feeling, environment, man, landscape, senses, reflection: all of these are gateways to Viviana Gaitán's work.

Lic. María Carolina Baulo, July 2015