In a recent conversation at Barro Gallery in New York, the Sue and Eugene Mercy assistant curator Ana Torok (MoMA, prints and drawings), likened Matías Duville’s artistic process to “throwing a lance” at the canvas. Indeed, Duville is not kind to his materials. His artistic oeuvre is replete with scratched metal and burned wood. For his paper works, charcoal is inflicted, not applied. When I had the good fortune to speak with the artist about his current exhibition at Barro Gallery, Vertices of Time, I asked what kinds of materials he had used for his paintings. One material stuck out as particularly harsh: “heat gun.”
Without attaching overly specific phenomena to Duville’s non-doctrinaire work, we see imposing mountains, looming tornadoes, barren landscapes, and gaunt trees. Beyond such objects and adjectives, there is potent strain of romanticism in Duville’s work, as noted by one audience member at the conversation between Duville and Torok. Duville’s urgent and contemporary romanticism ascends the natural landscapes of Caspar David Friedrich or the ruins of Thomas Cole’s Course of an Empire. Although, Duville’s Pink Ashes II, a diptych showing a crumbling landscape threatened by the environment around, shares more than a few sensibilities with Cole’s Destruction. Moreover, one could look on Pink Ashes II as Wordsworth looks on the Banks of Wye (“…with gleams of half-extinguished thought/With many recognitions dim and faint,/And somewhat of a sad perplexity.”)
To continue with the drawings, anyone walking into the exhibit will first notice the eruption of sanguine emitted from Soul Roads. Sanguine has a long history; the iron-oxide clay-chalk was frequently used by the 16th century Italian renaissance masters. The room with Soul Roads also contains drawings done in charcoal like the lonely Lagoa. Noting that the whole room is black, white, and sanguine, students of art history may smile to themselves, recognizing (or projecting) a dissection of aux trois crayons (“three pencils”: black, white, and sanguine). But sanguine has less lofty associations too. One may think of clay, blood, dried blood, terra cotta, and pottery—in this way it is ancient and corporal.Soul Roads, as Duville confirms, is a mountainous desert landscape with no shade. It is a scene of terrible brightness, so bright one cannot see blackness behind shut eyelids, only the hot red of blood and flesh.
The makeup of Duville’s work is often quite ornery, though it is possible to find some peace in paintings like Cardos de noche pampeana. These mental landscapes are dark and quiet, and particularly fun to discuss with a friend. Is that coral? Or a tree? A cliff? A wave? Yes, yes, yes, maybe. These paintings are pretty. The series is also a protracted marriage of catastrophe and acceptance. Far away from the drawings (or, one room away at Barro Gallery), such peace is a compliment contingent on slightly melancholy acceptance. Accept chaos as one accepts the weather, if one accepts the weather at all. And, if not, you must struggle with the confused mountain-waves of Vertices of Time, oscillating with hopes of serenity next to a scorched sun-planet (literally scorched—again, “heat gun.”) The ultimate success of Duville’s art lies in a casual ascension from the earth, being at ease with both chaos and serenity, as long as it is far, far away our sidled little earth.
About the writer: Claudia Gottridge is a student of Art History and English in the BA program at Boston University. For her academic writing, she has recently been awarded the Gilman Prize for Essays on Early Modern Drama, although she also has a keen interest in literary fiction and has been featured in the independent literary press, most recently in The Blood Pudding. She is also an editor at Boston University’s preeminent literary journal, The Beacon.