Two days ago I went to see the Antonio Lopez Garcia show. It returned faith. Great power and tenderness, exquisite tenderness, breathtaking tenderness.
One of the students afterwards asked me what was it I so appreciated about Lopez Garcia? Was it his extraordinary realism? I explained that that wasn’t it — that wasn’t the main point. Realism is just his vehicle — he isn’t simply depicting appearances, he is communing with aspects of his life, of his world. He isn’t interested ultimately in mastery — he’s interested in communion. That’s why so many works are unfinished and why so many take place over so many years.
I tried to explain that what moved me, what touched me was what was happening inside of him, how he was transformed in his act of painting, how that in turn transformed his material, embodied that experience, that frequency, in the materiality — and the material waits, the painting, the drawing, waits for sympathetic attendance — like a still tuning fork coming close to one that is vibrating, and in turn receives the same frequency, same thing. And here the frequency, in the end of it all, is love. I mean, in the depiction, in the questioning and answering of his investigation of appearances, in that back and forth, inside that dialogue, is a faith, a sustenance — love.
Love. Big word. Inside of everything real.