ENRIC TORMO. BARCELONA. MARCH 2008
 
…I would like you to write, because you know all my process, because I can not write now (the thesis does not allow it, the censorship does not allow me to show texts for now)


By receiving this e-mail I though: as always, Rute has put me into trouble. She asks me to write something concerning her process of artistic creation. Facing this challenge, and as it is expected, my first intention was to write one of those serious texts, with plenty of words, and where it seems that interesting things are said. Nevertheless, I remembered Leonardo’s aphorism, which says “there are people who think that there is something behind words.” To this picture of an old man with a magnifying glass looking at a straight row of letters, as ants, it was joined the memory of those long talks I had with you. It was here presented the contradiction between the graphic semantics and the pure dynamic of oral speech. Two very interesting ways of expression, but that in any case would not fit this occasion. Consequently, I though that perhaps it would be better to state some appreciations than …


The first news that arrived to me of your existence came in a very indirect way and as a subject of worry of a common good friend. I refer to Antero Ferreira. We shall retrace to the moments in which both of you were members of the directive team of the Fine Arts Faculty of Oporto. It was also the time in which your first sentimental rupture took place. Therefore, we can surely state that those were times lived with utmost intensity,  that was as much for the possibility of accomplishment of university utopia, as for the personal crisis, that any emotional rupture implies. This distant and indirect reference allowed me to build an aseptic picture, meaning scientific, of your existential reality. I could glimpse somebody with a deep sense of their own existence, but simultaneously, with a visible incomprehension of one’s own reality.  I saw you as someone with distinct psychic plans, not congregated among themselves, but with a deep will and interest in understanding which were the internal mechanisms of functioning. On the one hand, it appeared strength; I shall say a passion, which gave meaning to life. Notwithstanding this fact, this same power was contradicted by the more natural affective needs, which palpitated with the social and professional activity.


Some time after that I had the chance for us to meet at a restaurant table, along with Antero and Mireia, another Catalan, who was also in Oporto and in need of speaking Catalan. In that same dinner, the previously established hypotheses had been confirmed. Rute, you are passionate, strong, enchanting, but with a great self-control.  You are a rational little rain storm, dominated by reason, although it does not understand its real effectiveness.


Since that dinner and until today, a lot of water ran, and we have repeatedly had occasions to talk about humans and the divine; more over, we have inclusively initiated a doctoral thesis, clearly artistic. This is probably the best challenge we, at the moment, have in hands. It is a challenge that can consider an alternative system to the creation of a scientific/ university knowledge. Honestly, I think I made a good choice in having you as my PhD student, basically, because I am convinced that your system of auto-recognition is simply artistic. Life and creation are gathered together in you. One without the other is not conceivable; they feed each other and valuate the existence. To all this, one must add the value of the natural feminine side, which offers to the whole a sensitivity side that, being able to go from the brutal to the lyric, always has a face of the author.


It seems to me, at the very least, interesting, since nowadays, understand or to speak about art is very complex. This is because, for several centuries its real value has vanished. One departed from that conception of social, educational and dissemination … that was given to it and that made it essential in man’s understanding and conceptualization. That justifies it, as being enabled for abstraction and spiritual joy. From this reference, one had a slowly transfer, but effective one to appreciate it, basically for its economic component, in the best cases; or simply as an activity dedicated to the decoration and embellishment of the scene, where human relationships are established. All of this without considering, as it is our case, that will of usual functionalism between the ones responsible for the University’s teaching and artistic university research.  


Therefore, to find someone that makes of his own life, an artistic reason is always to be thankful for. One has the feeling to be facing a truth. There is something of consistent and real that is recognised only by looking at it. On that subject, I would like to point two complementary aspects that seem to me, memorable: the first one, to refer the technological instruments that you use; and the second one, to evidence as your artistic accomplishments are a way towards self-knowledge.  


Technologically, you use processes with a marked anthropologic meaning that sometimes indicates prehistoric or pre-industrial processes. I would like to remember the use of textile resources, which make us go indirectly backwards until old myths, separated from the feminine side; or the use of the technique of the “lost wax” to generate anatomic forms extracted from your own existence. To this reality is joined the use of top technologies: photography, computer science, etc. However, its contents, its forms become human again. I was surprised when the plans of the thesis or of the spaces that are now in exhibition, reached me by e-mail (informatics), being hand made. Obviously, there was a sensorial contradiction. Or not? Yes, while adequacy to the means, but not while communication wish. This we also have found some years ago in that pictures’ collection, let us say, black series and/or in the action of “Hug me”.


Similarly, it is necessary to recognise the easiness with which these technological means are used. There is no intention of virtuosity; it is not presented the necessity to bring them up to their capabilities of use. On the opposite, its use is direct, simple, evident, because the interest is to show them as they really are, simple means. They are not important, they are not the reason, they are only the contents’ accessory. To this reality one has to join another characteristic, all of them indicate a sequence. Even the photographic treatment, defined by their spontaneity, mark a before and an after, a journey.


The second aspect, that I previously designated, confirms definitively this veracity in the proposals. We agree that all the proposals in the field of the Art are self-referential to the author. That is the basic rule. However, in your case, I believe that the reality goes a little more beyond. Whereas, to the others, it is presented as a personal expansion, as a public exposition of an interior, in your case it is something distinct. It is a self-explanatory, it is a reflected action. You search yourself in your own workmanship. There is a high degree of introspection, not in the formalizations or expositions, but in previous and posterior acts, and that sometimes even you are surprised.


Therefore, those around you can only see you as a continuous development, as a result of continuous steps that overlap each other and that, at prompt moments, shape themselves in a mundane exterior, where they try to co-ordinate themselves with a whole. An interaction is looked for, an adequate confirmation is proposed, shall we say, a social valuation. However, in contrast to the normally established, where accomplishments are evaluated, in your particular case, you want for intentions to be considered. With all of this, I am not suggesting that your attitude is provoking, on the contrary. It is a search, and not a research, of the emotional resources that allow you to survive to a day-to-day adverse by the dominant mediocrity.


Well, I do not know if I answered adequately to your request, I tried… In any case, I would finish by saying that:


Grammatically, I did not know how to better express what Rute is, in her there is no beginning nor ending, she is simply a continuation, a prolonged, a constant, a maintenance, a duration, I also would like to be able to define her as being always eternal, but this I leave to…


Therefore:

…Rute Rosas…



Text written for the exhibition “there is no blue prince in the pink elephant”