2007
Taisa Helena Pascale Palhares
Galeria Virgílio
Color, a fundamental element in Renata Tassinari´s paintings, has always been physically present in her work. It has substance and is the matter revealed in different ways: agglutination of different materials, exploration of uneven surfaces, vigorous brushstrokes, overlapping of colors, use of certain hues side by side and, more recently, organization of her work in modular structures. Color has never been used just as a visual happening. Actually, her paintings move in a space between the aim to paint and the painting itself - so rich for modern art - making the objective character of the work outstand. The way she works does not carry any distinction, in principle, between her objects and the others around the world. In their own way, her paintings answer the difficult and ever-present question: what does it mean to say that something is a real art object?
In her most recent works the regularity and precision of forms and colors refer, together with a certain standardization and repetition of basic structures, to the universe of manufactured objects, from home appliances to design pieces. The use of multi-standard mdf plaques and acrylic frames that are explored as such, that is, are present side by side the oil paint as crucial pictorial elements, contributes to this approximation. As a contrast, colors are vibrant.
On the other side, by using these materials also as structural elements the artist makes her paintings approach an architectural space. In works such as Quadrado amarelo (Yellow Square, 2007) and Quadrado rosa (Pink Square, 2006), the line made up by the white acrylic frame retains and expands the space at the same time like the game between opacity and light reflection on the surface suggests a back and forth movement in which the physical limits of the paintings are constantly revisited. The acrylic frame edges are painted sometimes on the inside and sometimes on the outside suggesting subtle dialectics between the external and internal qualities of the paintings. In the Fachadas (Facades) series the acrylic box works simultaneously as a means to stop the unexpected arrhythmia. At the same time, the transparency of the material proposes an integration of the wall surface into the visual game triggered by the work – a unique procedure in the artist’s production.
In my opinion, the interest in the emphatic physical nature of these paintings, which do not hide the way they were done nor the materials they were made of, resides in the fact that they present themselves as being up-to-date and belonging to a space and time which are from this world and not from the beyond. Their strength of the work relies in this kind of instantaneous time in double: we are able to recognize immediately that what we see, be it by the familiar materials that are part of the everyday world be it by the spatial proximity of the paintings as they project themselves outwards, towards the space of the viewer.
