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From his youth in Ogawa the most visible marks have been those that have remained in relation to light and nature. A theater where subtlety, temperance and strategy itself are staged: the ancestry of thought.

Influenced by the work of Medardo Rosso, he saw in his beginnings a field of possibilities, of experimentation in the aura evoked in those works where a funereal ambiguity overlapped with the naturalness of his characters, like an infinite veil of rawness and sincerity. In the Italian artist he found perhaps the tip of the iceberg that would define his most mature style.

Ecce puer (Behold the Child), 1906.  Courtesy of Sculpturemagazine.Art

Parallel to Rosso, this veil which was presented in painting, had no relationship with the wet cloth technique, but rather was a boundary between the raw material and the sculptural fact, where the works mutate between the natural landscape and the portrait.

In this way, his early work will be mainly characterized by a gloomy naturalism that he will use as a field of action, denouncing the Vietnam War. Thus, at the beginning of the 70s, he made a series of portraits, among which Container III (1973) stands out, where the artist represents himself and his impotence in the form of a young man standing on a symbolic representation of the japanese flag, in a pose that evokes the proverb ‘see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil’.

Lying Man, 1971

It will be in turn in these years his encounter with the Mono-Ha movement that will frame his style in ways of contemporary art and abstraction mainly, with works such as Hypothetical Sculpture II, where he will pose manufactured wooden structures on trees, paradoxically confronting the symbolic dimensions of the same material in the encounter between nature and culture.

Even though his main medium is sculpture, the planning of the sketch is very important to Shigeo, the work of the line and the form in these, give account of two essential elements from this moment on: in the first instance it is the influence that Western art has had, mainly the school inaugurated by Rodin in his work and training: a centripetal figuration; eccentric; free; even a little baroque.

Works like Trunk III (1982) as well as Lying Man (1971) carry a structuring of the body that responds to the classical western canons (mainly Renaissance). Figuration from which he will move further and further from that moment on.

In the sketches of more current works, on the contrary, a very marked journey throughout his career in the definition of his style will be clearly seen, as well as the mass of lines with which he devised the reverse sides of Cave III (2010): the guidelines of the bodies; the hint of pose and form; the emotional evocation, will remind a treatment of the shapes and contours that we can find in sketches both in Rodin and in Da Vinci.

Trunk III, 1982

In this way, works such as Pompei II (1974) will inaugurate a new stage of total non-figurative where the forms will oscillate between the denial of figure and bio-cosmology, unified in the history of art. With a compelling and attractive abstraction, his sculptures refer us to the grammars of dreams, mainly to the reconstruction of oneiric, measured and regular forests: neo-romantic and fictional.

Having chosen wood as the primary material – together with plaster and iron – his work will be characterized by tearing, marking and carving on its surface with an electric saw, where the final sculpture will then be rubbed with the ashes of the remains of wood. of said carvings, covering these organic bodies and giving them a characteristic silvery hue.

Body Of The Gaze -Scatter, 1991. Photo: Tadasu Yamamoto. Courtesy of Ichihara Lakeside Museum

His sculptures will return repeatedly to the ideal of the cluster, a concept that he will relate to the social structure and will have a profound relationship with his interest in the anthropological field. Putting it in relation to nature, it will be reflected in the construction of sculptures as an amalgamation of minimal units where the subject becomes a pole, a tree, a rope, a milestone, a tomb.

His pieces will work from atomization to amalgamation, his sculptural universes metastasize in this very thing: the organic and inorganic particle simultaneously joins and separates, reforms, reorganizes, creates new forms and replicates them. Their bodies will form uniform as well as distinguishable masses, the lines will dissolve in the shadows and exalt in the light. Thus the dream will be once more ambiguous and nature will mutate into tekne.

Deus ex machina these measures, and regularity transform the forest into a cemetery: silver monoliths, carved, and arranged as schematically as possible will perhaps evoke new spirits.

Woods IV, 1991

It introduces us to a dream forest where space is multiple. If we allow ourselves to enter his universe, we will discover that it works like a tesseract, where the top is the bottom, the left the right, the front can be the back and the kata the ana.[1]

Its underwater roots take us to the landscape of the bottom of a river that turns towards the surface, where we wander without horizons or directions, and where geography makes us dreamy but confusing and we enter the thicket.

Thus, the gloom settles on the forest, as Toya Shigeo used to observe in his youth it did on the mountains of Ogawa. And perhaps in this forest his words will resonate in our ears

“I learned a lot by thinking about sculpture from the perspective of how strange it is that sculpture, which has no practical value whatsoever, did not exist at the outset but emerged along with human emotions.”[2]

But this forest and necropolis is autonomous and the thicket whispers over its mouth, within us, in the heart of what slips between our ears, and in said gloom the forest desires us.

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[1] kata” (Greek for “down”) and “ana” (Greek for “up”) to describe the two opposite directions in the fourth dimension, equivalent to right-left, up-down, and front-back.

The exhibition L’ oeil du labyrinthe by the Portuguese artist Maria Helena Vieira da Silva is perhaps just as its title says: like placing an eye on a labyrinth.

Due to its intricate architecture, the Dijon Museum of Fine Arts offers us an irregular tour of the two exhibition spaces, a vast retrospective located on the second floor, plus another minor one focused on her personal life on the ground floor, both reflecting, as her work, a disorder where vertigo is the only sure thing.

The variety of da Silva’s work in this exhibition extends from its beginnings in the 1930s, presented with a kind of kaleidoscopic figuration, deconstructing spaces, altering perspectives, and rendering them organic, up to her most abstract work in the 1980s.

Thanks to the donation of the Kathleen and Pierre Granville Fund, the museum owns one of the largest collections of the artist’s work, and it is for this reason that, in commemoration of the 30th anniversary of her death, they dedicate this double exhibition to her career and to her relationship with the collectors who were her friends and patrons in life.

On the upper floor, focused on her most analytical work, are omnipresent diagrams, folded into a kaleidoscopic aesthetic as if it were a kind of Borgesian riddle, that aid in the search for the Minotaur in his labyrinth.

Influenced by cubism, futurism and constructivism, the artist developed a language in which parallel and diagonal lines are a basic tool for the creation of optical vibrations, as can be seen in her stained glass windows in the Saint-Jacques de Reims church. Thus, despite the fact that some of her works are classified as architectural, the elimination of figurative references and the compositional complexity, added to a reduced color palette in many cases, result in an ornamentation of a living space.

Painting is thus presented as a stage where architectural utopias can be created without the limitations of media or perception, and the architectural work becomes an aesthetic space in her work that offers a certain sublime, immeasurable, palpable character.

These uninhabitable places, combined with a great admiration for the visual framework of modern cities, make linearity and connectivity characters in her architectural portraits in which geometry becomes a radical resource.

Her most abstract work is made up of perpendicular lines that vary from monochrome to the highest contrasts, its architectural form unrecognizable except for a few contours. Thus, her architectural work is mainly a visual-mathematical exercise.

“La partie d’échecs” 1943, Centre Pompidou

In her most figurative paintings, however, the conflict with a vanishing point is what relates Vieira da Silva’s work to the labyrinth. From a vertiginous perspective, the work isn’t projected towards infinity but instead has a very marked limit: the background is a figure in itself, a full stop, a culmination point and not a point of convergence.

In this way, her images function as a stage, where the vanishing point remains but the space acquires a chaotic, quasi-monstrous organicity, with limits between characters and surroundings erased.

We can see the architectural importance in her paintings by recognizing how the background articulates the figures in a kind of kaleidoscopic repetition. Its geometry is a relationship between figures (rhombuses, trapezoids, faces that act as minimal units) and the characters that merge together. In this sense, this kind of repetitive figure generates a type of optical vibration that balances their lack of life and actions.

The board itself resists in an unplayable game, the fourth wall is inverted and we are now watched by these mysterious characters that hide in the shadows. Vertigo increases and we have nowhere to hold on to. There is only one limit in this infinite space, and what we see looks back at us and thanks to this we don’t fall in.

Viewing Maria Helena Vieira da Silva’s work that covers different aspects of abstraction makes it clear that it is not the size of the work that creates quality. On the contrary, her smaller and more introspective works stand out from the rest due to their composition, dynamism and metaphorical meaning.

“Deux Femmes à l’ombrelle”, Pablo Picasso

In turn, unlike the narratives imposed on the women artists of her time, her paintings seem very earthy, without a strongly marked metaphysical aspiration or an esoteric search, instead engaging in an experimentation between the dream game, abstraction, aesthetics and the literary fable.

For the purposes of exploring these structures, the repetition of patterns with a clearly marked perspective, as mentioned, loses the true horizon in pursuit of visual homogeneity. The expansive delineation raises certain visual associations with the work of Picasso.

What is interesting here is the development that arises between these two points so far removed in her career, that is, a graphic language that she uses in certain works in which her abstract style converges in a sort of symbolic expressionism and in which traces of figuration can still be seen.

"L’Incendie II ou le Feu", Musée des Beaux Arts de Dijon

In works like L’Incendie II ou le Feu, where wavy lines are present, the use of contrasts is important to place the observer once again in the painting but without falling into it.

The articulation of the pictorial plane in diagonals combined with a flatness of perspective, alongside the depth given by the treatment of color, creates a somewhat medieval image. It could be said that the treatment of dynamism afforded by the line and the range of reds, browns and ocher, strategically arranged in certain points on the pictorial plane, schematically refer us to works by the Greek.

"La Scala" or "Les Yeux", Musée des Beaux Arts de Dijon

Entrar a la exposición ‘’L’oeil du labyrinthe’’ consagrada a la artista portuguesa Maria Helena Vieira da Silva es quizás como indica su nombre: como posar un ojo sobre el laberinto.

Por su intrincada arquitectura, el Museo de Bellas Artes de Dijon nos propone un recorrido irregular por los dos espacios que la conforman, una vasta retrospectiva situada en el segundo piso y otra menor centrada en su vida personal en la planta baja, reflejando como en su obra, un desorden donde el vértigo es lo único asegurado

La pluralidad de trabajos de da Silva expuestos en esta exposición concibe desde sus comienzos en los años 30 con una suerte de figuración caleidoscópica, desestructurando el espacio y oprimiendo las perspectivas, hasta volverlas en algunos casos orgánicas; hasta sus trabajos más abstractos  alrededor de los años 80.

El museo posee a su vez gracias a la donación del fondo Kathleen et Pierre Granville, una de las colecciones más grandes de la artista, es por esta razón que en conmemoración de los 30 años de su desaparición, dedican esta doble exposición a su trayectoria y a su relación con los donadores, quienes fueron en vida sus amigos y mecenas.

En el piso superior centrado en su trabajo más analítico, la mirada se posa inspectora sobre los esquemas, omnipresente, buscando a Asterión en su laberinto; replegado en esta estética caleidoscópica en sí mismo, como si de una suerte de acertijo borgeano se tratara.

Influenciada por el cubismo, el futurismo y el constructivismo desarrolló un lenguaje donde líneas paralelas y diagonales son una herramienta básica para la creación de vibraciones ópticas - como puede apreciarse en sus vitrales de la iglesia Saint-Jacques de Reims.

Así, a pesar de que algunas de sus obras sean nomencladas como de orden arquitectónico, la eliminación de referencias figurativas y la complejidad compositiva, sumadas a una reducida paleta de colores en muchos casos, derivan en una ornamentación del espacio habitacional. 

La pintura se presenta entonces como un escenario donde pueden crearse utopías arquitectónicas, sin las limitaciones de los medios ni la percepción. Y la práctica habitacional se vuelve en su obra un espacio estético, el cual pierde cierto carácter sublime; inabarcable; palpable.

Estos lugares inhabitables, combinados con una clara admiración por el entramado visual de las ciudades modernas, hacen de la linealidad y la conectividad  personajes en sus retratos arquitectónicos, donde la geometría se vuelve un recurso radical.

Sus trabajos más abstractos se conforman por líneas perpendiculares que van del monocromatismo hasta los más altos contrastes, donde la forma edilicia jamás será reconocible más allá de algunos contornos. Así su proyección arquitectónica estará mayormente dada por un ejercicio plastico-matematico.

“La partie d’échecs” 1943, Centre Pompidou

En sus cuadros más figurativos sin embargo, el conflicto con la línea de fuga puede que sea aquello que homologa el trabajo de Vieira da Silva con el laberinto. Cuya perspectiva vertiginosa, no se proyectan hacia el infinito sino que tienen un límite muy marcado: el fondo es una figura en sí misma, un tope, un punto de culminación y no un punto de convergencia. 

Así sus imágenes comienzan a funcionar como una caja escénica, donde el punto de fuga se mantiene uno pero el espacio adquiere una organicidad caótica, cuasi monstruosa, y donde los límites entre personajes y ambiente se borran.

Podemos ciertamente ver la primacía arquitectónica en sus pinturas, a partir de reconocer como el fondo articula las figuras en una especie de repetición caleidoscópica, donde la geometría del mismo, en una relación que parece darse entre las figuras - me refiero a los rombos, trapecios y planos como unidades mínimas - y los personajes en estos, se funden. En este sentido, este tipo de figuras repetitivas generan un tipo de vibración óptica que equilibra la falta de vida, de acción de los mismos.

El tablero se rebate sobre nosotros en una partida injugable, la cuarta pared se invierte y somos ahora observados por estos misteriosos personajes que se esconden entre las sombras, el vértigo se acentúa y no tenemos de dónde sostenernos, solo hay un límite en un espacio infinito, lo que vemos nos devuelve la mirada y es gracias a este que impedimos la caída.

El recorrido de todas estas obras que abarcan distintas vertientes de la abstracción dejan en claro que el tamaño de la obra no construye en Maria Helena Vieira da Silva un régimen de calidad. Por el contrario son sus obras más pequeñas e introspectivas aquellas que resaltan del resto por su composición, dinamismo y sentido metafórico.

“Deux Femmes à l’ombrelle”, Pablo Picasso

A su vez difiriendo de las narrativas impuestas a las artistas mujeres de su época, su pintura pareciera ser muy terrenal, y no haber una aspiración metafísica fuertemente marcada o una búsqueda esotérica; sino una experimentación entre el juego onírico, la abstracción, la estética y la fábula con un marcado tono literario.

A los fines de la exploración de estas estructuras, la repetición de patrones aunque con una perspectiva claramente marcada, pierden como se ha mencionado, perceptivamente el verdadero horizonte en pos de una homogeneidad visual, el hecho del delineamiento expansivo de las mismas plantea ciertas asociaciones visuales con los trabajos de Picasso.

Lo interesante es quizás el desarrollo que surge entre estos dos puntos tan alejados de su carrera, me refiero a un lenguaje grafista que adquiere para determinadas obras, donde convergen su estilo más abstracto en una suerte deexpresionismo simbólico y, donde a su vez se esbozan aún restos de figuración.

“L’Incendie II ou le Feu”, Musée des Beaux Arts de Dijon

En obras como “L’Incendie II ou le Feu" (El incendio II o el fuego)  donde la línea ondulatoria está tan presente, el uso de contrastes resulta estratégico para sostener una vez más al observador dentro del cuadro, y no cayendo dentro de este.

La articulación del plano pictórico en diagonales, combinado con la planitud de la perspectiva contrapuesta a la profundidad dada por el tratamiento del color, la hacen converger en una imagen con reminiscencias medievales: principalmente podría decir que el tratamiento del dinamismo dado por la línea y la gama de rojos, marrones y ocres dispuestos estratégicamente en determinados puntos del plano pictórico, nos remiten esquemáticamente a obras del Greco.

“La Scala” or “Les Yeux”, Musée des Beaux Arts de Dijon

Nos encontramos así en un terreno oblicuo, intrincado, donde vamos huyendo de las confortables tinieblas. El espacio nos observa - como en “La Scala ou les yeux” (la escalera o los ojos) - y allí nos damos cuenta, el monstruo es el laberinto, y nosotros su presa.