The carving tools follow one after the other on a block of Ulldecona stone, obeying the sculptor’s hand. Embedded in an easel, the video shows this process of impressing forces and intentions on matter. They parade from the radial to the chisel with the firm intention of making it disappear. Sculpting walking towards the minimums, as an extreme work of reduction, an example of remaining nothing. This is “Talla II 0.0”, by the Mallorcan Jaume Orejuela (Pollença, 1981). A certain curiosity may sneak into anyone who looks at this work, uncovering an old question in art and in life: From empty to full or from full to empty? They say that Michelangelo drew men and women from the skeleton, depicting their bones, then their muscles and tendons; then their organs and finally their skin and clothes, giving them form; coherence; and even spirit, as Balzac warns in “The Unknown Masterpiece”. This book remained for years at Picasso’s bedside, who was fascinated by the multiplicity of points of view of the figures captured by African artists. The great writers of our literature have been driven by the instinct to express themselves through words on paper. All of them, writers, sculptors, painters, have tamed their creative zeal by making use of some discipline or other. However irreverent or transgressive they may be in their forms, the works of artists – those of yesterday as well as those of today – are codified in some discipline. Reviewing references closer in time, Francis Alÿs was challenged by the tandem: “doing something leads to nothing” and its opposite: “sometimes doing nothing leads to something”, two questions that led him to generate two projects full of poetry: “Paradox of praxis” (1997) and “When faith moves mountains” (2002).
Jaume could have been motivated by the couple: “To leave a place to go nowhere”, “to leave nowhere to go somewhere”, both in “Talla II” 0.0, and in “Caixa”, Discoteca I “Top manta” and “Fill sobre ciutat”. To leave nowhere to go nowhere, in which we could read a daring response to the capitalist logic of production and consumption, which today lives in its maximum absurdity and, for some, with much hope, in the abyss of its decadence. The reversal of the hegemonic world and its imperialist logics, which envelop and constrict, if not strangle us. Moving on to a formal dimension of the work, it is possible and easy to see “Talla II 0.0” as an attack against any artisanal technique. On the contrary, this piece is an investigation into this territory, as it does not reject the discipline, nor does it try to renounce craftsmanship, but rather, situating itself in another, it gives itself over to riding between the two: balancing between the technique required by sculpture and that required by video recording and post-production: not focusing on the same medium or language that constructs it – but on several – so as not to interrupt the capacity for expression of which the true artist is capable, is not, however, something new. It responds no more and no less to the passage of time, to the technical and theoretical advances it brings with it. In a way, not accepting the changes in which we live means renouncing our time. It is wise to appreciate history, to know the circumstances and results of earlier times, but we also have the task of building it. The study of the past is necessary, but not sufficient; it is useful, but it does not act for us. Today’s artists may paint, draw, sculpt and rubricate less, but they design, engrave, post-produce and type more. They have not, however, renounced technique, discipline or craftsmanship, but have accepted the change of parameters that has been given to them. And this, which makes them their own, enriches us who witness it. Jaume’s work possesses the power to arouse doubts; that magnetism that invites the viewer to think. It may be because, as a cultural manifestation, it takes a stance with respect to its moment – in which every previous system seems to have entered into crisis -, because in a certain way it responds to its circumstances, but above all it is because of its origin.
His work arises from conflicts between the feeling of belonging to the place while one is not in it and the expiration of memory as time goes by, he talks about the role played by the border and the transition; as memory or oblivion. Lines, stains and voids that Jaume re-draws, delimiting other horizons. This gives his work its own authentic character, defining the unity of his work. The changes in the forms in which artists manifest themselves have not altered their competencies: the true work of the artist, which is not only conjured up from the theoretical level, but from the practical; from the most primary craftsmanship of the material with which he works, be it language; stone; or sequences. Every great artist is first a great craftsman. A craftsman facing the eternal unsolvable questions of the human being, which he cannot solve, but he can think about, work on, contribute other points of view. If we think briefly about one of the typical fears of the artist: that of the “blank paper”, we realise that it can only be overcome by acting. Clearly, there is a need to think, but there is a need to act. The question of whether “from empty to full or from full to empty” is nothing more than a repetition of one of the doubts that has always plagued human beings, along with others about the destiny of humanity, about its spirituality, or about the nature of its existence. Many of the ancient works that deserve to be remembered today are the product of those who, having asked themselves these questions, wanted to express themselves in a way that transcended them. Thus, by periodically thinking about them, we keep them within our field of thought. We will continue to notice these and other fears, because we will continue to think about the same issues, to move tirelessly through them. What will change will be the ways of approaching them.
What would history be without the plural and particular visions that artists generate through their work?
