Mario Núñez
Mario Núñez is not easily pinned down; his painting detaches itself from an oppressive reality to project an autonomous force that is both evocative and expressive. In his work a central approach is put to the test: Painting implies an investigation into the creative capacity of art itself and, therefore, of the possibilities of language and its complex relationship with thought.
The Vestige of Impermanence
by Valerie Campos (January, 2021)
Aesthetics shouldn’t have to examine works of art as if they were hermeneutical objects; instead, what should be understood is their incomprehensibility. The aesthetical experience destroys comprehensibility, because there is no script; that means that there is no preestablished form that could impose how to read works of art. The concept is still unable to reach, in its predeterminate forms, the content that imagination has elaborated. The term Art is a metaphysical abstract concept that is still at the center of profound discussions, because its definition is opened to multiple interpretations, that vary according to the various cultures, the epoch, movements, or society. The names “science” or “art” originate only from linking observations about nature, function and qualities of beings and their symbols, to create a system of tools, or rules, directed in their totality towards the same object.
This is the more general meaning of art. In that sense, the world is the work of art, and not its existential limitations. In certain psychoanalytic conceptions, the truth has the same structure as fiction. And to reach some of them, we would first need to get rid of any type of classification, framing or preconceived idea, because what is visible is only an isolated example, and the truth is that other truths are living and coexisting despite of us in absolutely everything; they manifest themselves in an amplified manner, frequently contradicting the rational experiences of the past.
In this movement of giving and abstracting Itself, the painting of Mario Núñez isn’t easily grasped. The originality of his painting does not admit a unification that would make it obey to a series of recipes that would lead to a mechanical result. His painting splits from an oppressive reality by constructing the bet of freedom of his pictorial pure relations. The implementation of his many pictorial mediums frees him from an exercise that would only lean on imitation, by giving to his work an expressive and autonomous evocative force while challenging a medullar statement that could be expressed in the following manner: If reflecting on painting implies a research about the self-capacity of art for creation, and therefore, of that on which one is reflecting, then it is unavoidable to ask again about the possibilities of language and is complex embeddedness with thought. The knowledge of the artist mainly consists of having at hand a set of interdependent skills that allow him to establish and eliminate habits whenever necessary. Kant is very clear when he establishes that it is the product that becomes the model of judgment. The contemporary philosopher Nelson Goodman adopted a constructive position, when addressing a standardized reading of Wittgenstein’s work, searching for a way of using language that wouldn’t lead to the same mistakes that have consolidated philosophical speculation. Goodman addresses this reading from the conviction that all the habits which constitute knowledge contribute, -depending on the type of person and the different moments of life-, to create wealth and resources that there is no reason to reduce, and which should be instead compaginated and corresponded. It is from this position that he develops a complex structural-inspired analysis on the theory of signs, while pointing out that it is impossible to imitate reality as it is, as every vision is accompanied by an interpretation that obeys to certain conventions. In this context, the painting of Mario Núñez can only keep on inquiring on the nature of metaphor, as well as its variant, which is metonymy, not only as a rhetorical recourse, but as the dynamism and activity by which painting itself deploys
Painting, in its wider sense of poiesis, namely as action, production and creation. But also, as time, space, object, container, force, essence, and the very power of language. It is for this reason that I prefer not to point out the informal references, influences, or chromatic similitudes, even by referring to its respective artistic vanguards. Its particular authenticity doesn’t come from its dialogue with the great masters of painting but from the ironic detachment with respect to every groundless transfiguration of discourse, which in Mexico, is expected to be more and more precise, day by day. In short, the work of Mario Núñez invites us to go beyond comprehension, to keep it outside, to hide it in a sense, while liberating a multiplicity of possible interpretations. It is all about the instantaneous transformation of perceptions and the vestige of impermanence itself. The challenge consists in liberating experience from the subjection subjacent to action. The painting of Mario Núñez, from within and from without, seems to forward us towards an eternal return. A fine thread that knots, in its complexity, all the domains of human experience that can take place in the same canvas. An idyllic romance between the line, and the magistral use of color, becoming an important instrument to re-discover the interpretations of expressionist contemporary visual innovation in Mexico. A challenge that dilutes itself within its inevitable contradictions, in his historical nihilism and the very urban and landscape heterogeneity of its utopic compositions.
