Without shelter

Jose Ibarrola

 

Lately I cannot see umbrellas just as umbrellas.

Symbol

Something that stands for, represents or
denotes something else (not by exact resemblance,
but by vague suggestion, or by some accidental or
conventional relation).

 

I think that there is something utterly mysterious and incomprehensible in our perception of objects.

Paradox

A phenomenon that exhibits some conflict
with preconceived notions of what is
reasonable or possible.

 

The illogical coexistence of things. This is a paradox. For example: an umbrella is, in itself, a curious paradox, since, although we may think that we are sheltered, it only protects us from the rain, and even so, we always end up getting wet. The umbrella we beg for when it starts raining, is useless when the storm breaks out. It only makes us feel under cover in the open.

// In the open, where there is not any shelter.

 

Sometimes an image catches us like a spider´s web. Its presence accompanies us imperceptible in the labyrinth of our memories. It is a curious mechanism which always surprises me. It looks as if memories needed a slow maceration before reaching their own entity and only then, digested with the required time, could exert their specific function on our memory.
An event : a real image of a real friend. It is the image of a man and his umbrella lying side by side, orphans, at the edge of a red thick puddle. The umbrella, open on the ground moving in the wind, implacable, forebodes the definitive absence of the person lying next to it. With its round face and its single finger it looks and points at all those who dare to gaze. And it seems that drops trickle down like tears.
And one day, later on, I paint an open umbrella by an empty chair to speak of this absence. And I discover that it is a metaphor and an homage.

Metaphor

(Gr. ….to transfer)
The figure of speech in which a name or descriptive
term is transferred to some object to which it is not
properly applicable.

 

I think that I only paint images that narrate my sentimental patrimony, that personal place that looks for memories to recover them from the abandon imposed by oblivion.

I also paint to heal the wounds that I do not want to forget.

Parable

( Gr. a placing side by side)
A fictitious narrative (usually of something that
might naturally occur), by which moral or spiritual
relations are typically set forth.

 

The landscape is a personal reconstruction that translates what we have seen and the suspicion of what we try to see. Present time in the landscape is nothing but a nominal spot to attest its readiness to be invented. That is why I only know how to paint imaginary landscapes. Those places my dreams have dwelled in.

There are landscapes which made me.

I would like to return something.

 

José Ibarrola, 2002.