Lawrence Durrell
The Strokes of Paradise
One of the most difficult and yet unavoidable themes of all time in art is love, and in the plastic work of Fermín Gutiérrez, we find it in that dimension that without a doubt is the only one that corresponds to it, exactly, since It represents it in a fan of vivid colors captured primarily by hearing rather than by the eyes; or, our eyes listen to each other, they become sonorous before its color. Yes, “space vibrates, as it reaches us, it demands that we be just the ear.” However, let's listen, the artist knows his art, he knows that after the dizziness and the intensity of his light, observation and calm must come, which can fix us definitively before "the aesthetic object" or better yet, before "the experience." aesthetics,” which definitely, as he clearly knows, not all of us have the ability to achieve. Simply visiting a painting exhibition, simply looking, does not of course imply this “fact” (I am referring to the aesthetic phenomenon) that is so important to being able to taste a work. (The same thing happens with the simple reading of a book, a performance, the cinema, etc. These would simply be the preliminaries for said experience). Our painter's theme – I repeat – is one of the most difficult: Love. It is not enough to just look, the gaze is the stepsister of fantasy, what it is about is Seeing, because “Seeing is Imagining”. Here, as I see it represented by Fermín, love shows us its two faces, in addition to being tender, it is also terrible. When we love we are always in danger, the relationship, our individuality is in danger; Without a doubt, as Durrell says, “it is still strange that such a painful experience (after separation, of course, if there is one or even without it) can feel at the same time healthy, and positively constructive.” Fermín's painting tells us, more than the unfounded fears in the religious, those types of fears more based on what is known as "real - everyday", which contain above all or are above all by unknown enclosed, in the meanders both instinctive and mentalities of “our unknown” – why not accept it – human nature. This world is so small – I mean the human, our limit – and yet so immensely complex.
The community of lovers (Blanhot's title) is not so easy, but not so difficult either - at least, that's what his painting tells me - mainly if we accept each other "as we are", for each other, knowing each other through our culture. and our world around.
This is one of the themes that he addresses in the pictorial narrative of Fermín Gutiérrez. One of the most important painters of our northern latitude.
