Eduardo Stupía, The rebellion of the drawings

Since 2009 I have the pleasure to direct and design the magazine MOR, an annual publication that aims to take a look at contemporary cultural production. Features notes of music, movies, books, internet, tourism, gastronomy, architecture and design written by specialists. In the last issue, published in December 2013, I wrote the visual arts article, dedicated to one of the Argentine artists I admire most: Eduardo Stupía, whom I want to thank the kindness and generosity to accept my invitation.
Here is the text. To take a look to the complete magazine online, click here.

Eduardo Stupía is one of Argentina’s most relevant contemporary artists. In a scenery where the word “contemporary” is not referred to a chronological sense but to a way of creating art –based on solutions ostentatiously removed from the traditional arts, with an obligation of having complex conceptual frame, with an spectacular and onerous use of new technologies, with huge media deployment or with the intervention of armies of experts of such specific and dissimilar areas as engineering or taxidermy- Stupía manages to fill his seat in the fine arts world with its very essence: the drawings. There is one particularity though: In the work of Stupía the drawings are contemporary because they are intentionally removed from their role in the “fine arts”. The line confronts that cultural construction forged in the colouring books of our infancy; starts a revolution against the primary mandate of being the limit for a coloured surface (let’s paint “inside the line”); it rebels against the hierarchic submission and against subordination to the painting, considered in the past as necessary to transform that black and white piece of paper into a “finished work”. Drawing in Stupía's work does no longer consider itself merely as a previous step on the way to a larger work of art; instead, it throws itself to an independence epic and stands by its own. Permanently emancipated, the line and the surface (the stain) enjoy their autonomy. On the linen or on the page, the lines move, tangle up, attract or repel each other and build a work of art that comes and goes between abstraction and figuration. 

Dialectic of drawings

Some of his drawings, especially those made during his first stage, are figurative in a traditional way. The represented elements can be easily distinguished. Although they are usually set in sceneries that do not respect the occidental canon and the traditional vision about perspective, they use the space in a manner more similar to the oriental conception. Nevertheless, even in his “abstract” works, the most abundant, the drawing portrays a figurative being. In Stupía’s drawings is not the artist who draws the characters, the landscapes, the tress or the situations, but they are drawn in the mind of the spectator instead. Eduardo makes us draw in our heads, invites us to loose ourselves in the intricate maze of his strokes, his stains and his gaps until we can read stories. The prestigious art critic Fabián Lebenglik wrote in the catalogue for the retrospective show presented at the Recoleta Cultural Centre in 2006. “The work of Eduardo Stupía smartly plays with the trained eye, which is inevitably driven to over interpret lines, filigrees, stains and strokes. In that way of subtle imaginary correspondences, its wefts are shown like mirages in which every eye sets its own story”. Eduardo’s drawings can be looked at, but they can also be read.
Another particularity of Stupía's work resides on the always even distance between abstraction and figuration. Impossible to be classified, his drawings have no quarrel with the classic categories, but they absorb them instead. Abstraction or figuration? Writing or design? Drawing or painting? Signifier or significant? Stupía’s work is the chronicle of a road towards synthesis. But this is not a synthesis related to the basics, but quite the opposite, is the synthesis as in dialectics, that synthesis that widens its field until it may contain a whole that goes beyond conflicts and dichotomies.

The calligraphic signifier

Many prestigious critics and writers wrote about the closeness between writing and Stupía’s work. Saying that rivers of ink have been shed on this relationship would be an overstatement, but is a beautiful and useful image to illustrate this particular case’s material brotherhood between the drawing and the writing.
It is very difficult to write about Eduardo’s work and not giving up to the temptation of theorising about languages, systems, alphabets and calligraphies.
By looking at any of his drawings, the gaze starts to run from one spot to the other. The composition skills with minimal resources –black, white, line, plane, emptiness- forces the eye to sequentially read the work of art in several directions. The Hebrew alphabet is read from right to left, the oriental calligraphy from top to bottom, the western writing from left to right. Stupía’s work, on the other hand, creates and recreates a system of its own, masterly driving the visual flow between lines, stains, colourful filigree and empty spaces. As real works of arts do, Stupía’s work builds its own system, invents its own paradigm and communicates its instructions at the same time that they are used. Some kind of visual symphony that transports us through allegros and silences until we feel that we are the ones who created the feeling and the story in front of each drawing. Eduardo’s work is also musical and narrative. It sounds and it tells.
Eduardo Stupía has always been related to writing: with the significant, as it’s easily perceivable in the surface of his drawings, but also with the signifier, as he worked a long time as an English translator. His curatorial, criticism and art texts are both sensitive and generous. For many years he collaborated with Diario de Poesía –the most important Latin American poetry publication, founded by his friend Daniel Samoilovich– with translations and articles. When, in 1992, the artist Juan Pablo Renzi, in charge of design and art for the publication, prematurely died, Eduardo took over his duties and became responsible for designing the newspaper. On a similar ground, he was in charge of designing the frontispiece of the books published by the editorial house Adriana Hidalgo, directed by Fabián Lebenglik. Draughtsman, critic, writer, translator and designer.

The multiple artist

When talking to Eduardo Stupía one may confirm what his story allows imagining: an attentive, mildly unsettled, alert personality, who knew how to sail the Argentinean cultural waters for the last 30 years getting inspiration, free of prejudice, from every possible stimulus. He always had a close relation with literature, poetry, visual arts and cinema. As if he was living five or six lives at the time, Stupía is a translator, a writer, a reader, a teacher, a movie expert, a designer, a suffering River Plate fan and, of course, an artist. If all this is not enough, during his formation years he flirted with music and drama. This prolific participation in the world of culture made him an acquaintance of the most relevant figures of the media since 1970 until today. In fact, is a circle to which he gained the right to be a part of. And this access was not due to a feverish labour, to the curious extravagances artists usually embody or to the power of his manifestos (which he indeed wrote), but because of the solidity and introspectiveness of his work, far from any type of fashion, tendency or movement like not many others. Completely original, persistent and attractive. A work that naturally demonstrates its cleverness. Is almost the same naturalness with which Eduardo assumes his role as a virtuous artist. 
To clearly describe his personality, it would be enough to say that this draughtsman with a 40 year career, unanimously recognized by his colleagues and the critics, whose work is part of particular and museums' collections, for example New York’s MoMa, has been working as a “full time” artist only in the past four years. Until then, he divided his time between the work of an artist and several jobs. He was a book store employee, a freelance translator for several editorial houses, paperback writer for video’s covers and press director for cinema distributors among other jobs. A strategy that allowed him, apart from making a living, to always be in touch with the most simple of all words, the real world. An anchorage that never prevent him from being the prolific demiurge of his complex worlds built, like the most transcendental creations, with the most basic elements: ink and paper.

Stupía by himself

—Do you have a preconceived image of the work or you are just as blank as the paper (or the linen) when you begin?

—I don’t have an image, I have an idea of what the painting should look like. To start painting is similar to start talking. Blank is silence. One does not begin to talk in space, you begin in time, and in the linen is the exact opposite. You start with a voice, sort to speak, a first graphic impression that advances until it reaches a certain point. There, another voice, another situation, begins to “sound” in other moment, or area, of that space. So far, we have two voices, two situations that resound together, close or far away from each other. And I keep adding voices until I get the whole choir, which is the painting. I don’t believe in the image. There is no image as such, it is a consequence of the proceedings.

—Does the chance have a place in your work or you always feel you are “under control”?

—The control over the work of art is never achieved, but it is also never lost. Sometimes, you have to force the entrance of control, mostly when improvisation and spontaneity are too predominant, and there are other times when you have to let the craftsmanship go and drift a little.

—Have you ever felt like the work was exhausted, that you couldn’t find anything new to add?

—Yes, permanently, but not with the work as a whole but with some particular paintings. Actually, what people call "the work of art" is a social or an history of the arts’ construction. For the painter, the only thing that is real are the paintings They are the ones who get exhausted or are able to go on.

—Did you experienced with colour? 

—In the last few years I tackled the colour, not as a full and complex palette painter but as someone who uses flashes of shades and colours under the dominating canon of the black and white. What I mean is that there are variations that go from the bluish or coppery greys to the earth tones and, from there, to the reds to go on to the oranges and the yellows. But always as a commentary, as a counterpoint.

—Already firmly established on the argentinean scene, do you consider that in the last few years you are achieving visibility in the international scene?

—Yes, it can be said so, if you consider the participation on International Exhibitions as a synonym of achieving international presence, which is highly arguable. It’s really hard achieving true visibility and critical and commercial response overseas, or at least in those countries that consider themselves as central in that “world of the arts” alluded by Sara Thornton. Nevertheless, and not to pose as a victim, I must say that I’ve been doing quite well in the exhibitions and that thanks to the work of my gallerist, Jorge Mara, I’ve found a lot of receptivity in places difficult to reach such as Madrid, Rio de Janeiro, Miami and even Hong Kong. In 2013 I presented a solo exhibition at the Rosenfeld-Porcini Gallery in London, and a couple of years ago in the Galería Dan in Sao Pablo, and we are talking to the Galería Garó people, also in Sao Pablo, to present a show in 2015.

—Do you consider that working in different fields for a long time contributed or harm your work as an artist?

—It significantly contributed for many reasons. First of all, because it gave me the freedom of not having to sell my paintings for a living. Second, because it trained me in the ability to work within a restricted time frame and under the most diverse conditions. An third, because it helped me to keep my feet on the ground and not to prematurely think of myself as an artist.

—Do you consider a particular artist as an influence on your work? 

—I had many, countless influences. An outstanding influence, as obvious as it may be, is Yuyo Noé. Now I am very interested in contemporary German painters –Richter, Oehlen, Penck, Meese, Kiefer. The same happens with the entire abstract expressionism tradition, the German expressionism, the romantic landscapes, Hokusai, Hiroshige and everything done by Picasso, Matisse and Cezanne.