LOÏC RAGUÉNÈS, ONLY A GRAIN OF SAND at CLEARING, NEW YORK

by Isaac Aden

I am only a grain of sand,
Always fresh and friendly.
Who drinks, who laughs, who sings
To please his lover.
Very sweet, my dear beautiful
Love your frail lover:
He is just a grain of sand,
Always fresh and friendly.

– Erik Satie
Trois poèmes d’amour, 1914

Footprints left along the shore ever erased by the ceaseless relent of the sea recall the ephemeral aspects encompassed in our existence.  Just as a grain of sand on the beach, each individual’s reach is unique, yet small relative to the infinite specs of sand scattered across the coast, but collectively they are that which builds the earth beneath our feet.  Prompted by the recent passing of the seminal painter Loïc Raguénès (French, 1968-2022) CLEARING has organized three concurrent posthumous exhibitions to honor his legacy at their Brussels and New York galleries.  Fittingly, the New York exhibition, Only a Grain of Sand is titled after Erik Satie’s Trois poèmes d’amour (Three Love Poems). This tripart song cycle from 1914, begins “Ne suis que grain de sable,” translating to “I am only a grain of sand,” which initiates the simple ode to an unknown loved one. The presentation brings together over forty paintings primarily rendered in tempera on canvas While the paintings selected primarily focuses on his production from 2016 to the present, the exhibition nonetheless seeks to encapsulate the totality of his oeuvre. 

Raguénès painted canvases imbued with poetics and quietude. Raguénès paintings are tenderly rendered and fraught with melancholy, nevertheless they maintain a romantic retention of hope.  Simultaneously, Raguénès’ work is self-aware, ripe with irony, yet he manages to maintain a deep sense of sincerity.  The profound significance of Raguénès’ work lies in his ability to defy a dialectical progressions of art historical norms.  Raguénès manages to achieve this by presenting optical points of recognition or signs contrasted with a distinctly evident hand, harkening from an era entirely disconcerted with signifiers or representation.  Raguénès’ paintings exhibit scumbling, an acknowledgement of the compositional edge of the canvas, and a touch which evoke the tradition of the abstract expressionists.  However, Raguénès abandons the virility of abstract expressionism while retaining its potential for tenderness and sensuality. The peculiar and perhaps most intriguing aspect about Raguénès’ work is the presence of his painterly approach combined with a range and unexpectedly and seemingly antithetical inclusions of diametrically opposed aesthetic stances. The complexity of Raguénès’ work defies the singularity of modernism in favor of the plurality offered by a metamodernistic or liminalist perspective on painting.

For those unacquainted with the oeuvre of Raguénès, you will find his work unfolds through a number of self-described chapters of discreetly distinct bodies of work. The earliest works in the exhibition (dating from 2005) are drawings depicting images whirling dervishes appropriated from found images, which have had an abstracting halftone applied to them. Raguénès would then delicately render the halftone dots in a single color.  These works seem to be in direct dialogue with Raguénès’ monumental scale wall paintings, As is evident in is his mural of a polar bear or one of his early works with CLEARING depicting Pierre Brossolette Elementary School in Charleville-Mézières, France from 2011. Specific to this period, one can clearly consider these works through the lenses of postmodernism. Raguénès was appropriating found imagery, albeit, contrary to other earlier mechanical forms of reproduction, Raguénès made use of digital filters. Additionally, Raguénès would hand paint the final “layer” thus maintaining the sensitivity of his own personal touch.  From these important precursors one can trace the aesthetic developments, which would ultimately inform the development of Raguénès’ own unique style.  

Following his halftone works Raguénès produced a serial body of paintings featuring a grid of circles. The paintings seem to be consistently 54 x 50 cm. and constructed with circles of the same size.  The obvious connection between the grids of circles and the halftone watercolors of appropriated images is that of a micro expansion. One can see this relationship specifically in the painting Max and Susann in which Raguénès’ grid contains a number of circles in which some have been painted the same color as the ground, thus causing them to recede and implying the potential of a similar halftone pictorial image. Although, any such image seems so abstracted it is not clearly visible.

In a latter iteration of this series Raguénès abandons the overpainting of circles in favor of presenting a grid of circles all rendered in the same color presented against a ground of a single color such as Candle in the Wind. The space purposefully left around the grid implies the composition does not continue thus reducing the terms of the painting to the boundary of the canvas. Therefore, the grid of circles is clearly defined as a discrete set.  These paintings diverge from the half tone works in that they forego representation and present what can be perceived as a prime object in the form of a pattern. I contend Raguénès’ structural methodology defines a prime pattern. This approach has similarly been utilized by artists from the group BMPT or other painters who employ a type of emblematic abstraction, such as Daniel Buren’s stripes, Niele Torini’s strokes or Olivier Mosset’s Circles. 

The order of construction and the terms in which one can ascertain these paintings seem such that the system (in this case the grid of circles) is first, followed by the selection of color and finally followed by the handling of paint itself. Much like the half tone works, the concluding phase of this process (the physical application of the paint) which most strongly influences the painting itself reveals the indelible presence of the artist’s hand.

However, through studying the breadth of Raguénès’ oeuvre, it became clear to me his relationship to color was highly personal and perhaps one of the most significant facets of his style, even more so than the initial individual parameters he set down for himself.  Color is for Raguénès what connects the disparate aspects of his painting practice and what binds them together. It is through his melancholic mixing of desaturated pallets, one begins to recognize and become acquainted with the quietude and poetics which define Raguénès’ work.  

Personally, I felt one of the defining achievements of Raguénès’ exhibition Only a Grain of Sand, was the instance I realized his large wall mural. The mural is invisible at first, only revealing itself through the peripheral glance or play of light. It is made of binary pairs of circles one on top of the other, which appear to be the same size as the circles from his grid paintings. The circles were drawn directly onto the wall and painted an extremely pale tint of blue and pink tempera such that they are almost white. The first moment I realized Raguénès almost invisible wall painting was a pure revelation, it is an absolute artistic triumph and delivers exactly what I crave in art. The subtlety of the work defies capture in reproduction. The variation of sheens between the painting and the wall are such that the work is activated by movement of the viewer and is only evident via the elusive effects of reflected light.  The circles are presented sometimes sparsely and other cases in dense clusters of archipelagoes. According to the galleries’ director Martine Ma, the artist’s estate provided a digital plan which was then executed by former members of his studio. The site situated aspect of this work and its relationship to the invisible lead me to consider Raguénès in relation to Robert Barry. Yet, it is in Raguénès’ propensity to swing in directions contradictory to the terms of the aforementioned minimal or conceptual painters and his use of signs or mimetics as opposed to abstraction or a purely formalist approach to painting which ultimately distinguish and define him. 

For example, chronologically following these paintings Raguénès painted Pharmacy,in which on the same size canvas as his grids, Raguénès painted a single yellow circle against a painterly ground of the most desaturated phthalo.  Contrary to his previous grids, this painting evokes landscape. The circle appears as a sun and the ground the sea or sky. Conventionally artists contending with the terms Raguénès had previously engaged with would never reintroduce representation. This would lead one to believe perhaps we could perceive it as a pure abstraction exhibiting the push and pull of hard edge combined with painterly abstraction as seen with Hans Hoffman’s rectangles of solid color over painterly courses. Although, the assertion Raguénès was engaging a mimetic depiction of a landscape (or more specifically a seascape) is reinforced by examining the next systemic framework Raguénès introduced into his oeuvre: The Waves.

From 2017 until his death in 2022Raguénès would become known for his series of Wave paintings.  Following a similar structural system as his grid paintings, both had a defined set of subjective terms which would serve as the boundaries for the artistic liberties taken in his execution.  Raguénès wave paintings are made of linear bands of wave patterns set against a painterly ground. At first glance The Wave Paintings might seem to be situated amongst the sardonic efforts of so many of the postwar painters who employed a “Bad” or wonky type of figuration in their work. However, as in all his other series, the true significance and sophistication of Raguénès paintings lies not in the individual painting or body of work for that matter, but in the complexity, each brings to the totality of his oeuvre. 

Following a similar approach of setting a structural form for the subject and allowing for artistic license to occur within this framework,Raguénès developed further bodies of work. He would paint scumbled fields of color, recalling the Color field painters of the1950’s, yet he would delicately punctuate these fields with tow symmetrical binary pairs of circles of solid color. One circle matching the same size as from his previous paintings with the second being slightly smaller. Additionally, these paintings would frequently include subtle edge effects, which would migrate into other bodies of work, as can be seen in his more naturalistic depicted abstractions of the sea.  Raguénès’ final body of work would again include the specific circles he previously implemented, furthermore he added circles of different sizes, he would encircle one with a ring, and set them against a painterly field. The paintings clearly signify solar systems and evoke a cosmic concern in Raguénès’ oeuvre, thus only adding to the complexities one could ascribe to the interpretations of his earlier grids of circles.

One of the most compelling aspects about Raguénès is his ability to reintroduce formal explorations of aesthetic concerns abandoned by contemporary painters. For example, normally artists would not touch the painterly vocabulary of the early Avant Garde, for the same reasons painting a realistic landscape or classical nude would seem irrelevant today. There is a precedent of liner stylistic development in which prior stylistic developments are considered currently irrelevant. However, Raguénès’ ascetically inclusive approach to painting remains extremely viable to today’s artists and audiences.  Perhaps it is because, the barreling speed of modernist progression to quickly abandon large swathes of paintings’ potential in favor of the driving demands for newness manufactured by the effects of capital on a modernist society. Raguénès distinguishes himself from conventional modernism with the addition of overt representation, whether symbolic or otherwise reduced.  Historically speaking, the inclusion of a representational signifier would seem irreconcilable with the primary concerns of minimalist, hard edge, or formalist abstraction. Distinctly, Raguénès simultaneously is able to embrace both ends of the spectrum without denouncing one in favor of the other, thus positioning his work on a proverbial pendulum.  Rather than self-imposing rigid stylistic adherence, Raguénès fluidly and elegantly swings through previously segregated aesthetic discourses, thus revealing the complexity and significance of his work and cementing him as a truly liminal artist.

Isaac Aden, 

New York 2024

Tinta Viva. Federico Cartas in conversation with Editor in Chief Alice Zucca

Tinta Viva

Federico Cartas

January 26th – February 25th 2024

Alchemy Gallery, NYC

Curated by Georgina Pounds

Tinta Viva presents a collection of explosive paper works by Mexican artist Federico Cartas (b.1988 Mexico) that strive for perfection in an uncontrolled physical world. Exhibited for the first time in New York. The works, as Cartas explains “requires the integration of physics, chemistry, and trial & error to create “the perfect accident”. Opening Friday January 26, 2024, at Alchemy Gallery, Tinta Viva will be accompanied by a captivating short film, exhibited as editioned video works, by renowned creative Amanda Demme, and produced by Santiago García Galvan, documenting the artist’s process from the Ajusco Volcano. Amanda is making unique narratives of artist processes, and this is the first insight to a longer series that will be released later in 2024. Its Amanda Demme’s interpretation of the artist process.

Cartas works with an abundance of unexpected materials including his own blood, Chinese ink, explosive powder, LSD and lava dust from the Etna Volcano in Sicily. Like Arte Povera artists Jannis Kounellis and Mario Merz who employed varying materials, including wax, tar, wire, and neon tubes – and also Yves Klein who referred to his iconic Klein Blue as “leftovers from the creative process” – the idea of production and result of the activity becomes Cartas’ artwork. Symbolically, Cartas mixes his own DNA to present his past and the physical body; LSD to present the uncontrollable effects on humans; and lava dust to represent the ground and eruptions of the Earth – despite the fact these mediums are not supposed to be mixed. Yet, visually, their combination and subsequent separation in the explosion create interesting textures and patterns when they meet the paper. Driven by the white ink on the black paper, and the black ink on the white paper, Cartas pictures uncontrolled formations of larger rocks, dispersed dots and scatterings of dappled pattern. On a micro-scale, formations of new rocks on the paper surface are visible. On a macro-scale, it’s numerous galaxies and clusters of stars.

The way the materials are dispersed onto the paper is a process of phenomenons derived from the artist’s home-made technique set up within his studio located on The Bowery, New York. “To understand the variables we must refer to the energy and power of the explosion in the moment, considering the wind, the temperature of the wind and the aerodynamics of the wind. The explosions in New York are different to those in Mexico City; in Mexico they are different because there is a higher altitude and as a result less oxygen”. As a result of the explosion, the centrifuge force and aerodynamics are disrupted because the explosion and chemicals are separated. The titles of each work speak to the importance of physics, aeronautics and astronomy. These include Galaxia centrifuga, Horizontal centro con alien, Volcano du Bloody Lava, and Tornado V.2. Both individual artworks and the series as a whole show undulating explosions flowing between diptychs and triptychs – further accentuating this idea of uncontrolled movement.

Federico Cartas also opens his studio in Mexico City from February 6 – 11 to correspond with ZsONAMACO 2024.

AZ: Congratulations on your show opening this week in New York. I wanted to begin with your reference to Arte povera. Arte povera was first initiated by the Italian art critic and curator Germano Celant, in 1967 and was a new way of describing methods of creating without the restraints of artistic traditional practices and materials. His gallery texts and curated exhibitions provided a collective identity for artists across Italy including Jannis Kounellis, Mario Merz, Marisa Merz, Giulio Paolini, Pino Pascali and Michelangelo Pistoletto. I’m reminded of the Arte Povera movements in Tinta Viva mostly because the use of the earth, the ground, of the lava as a material. You mention that the works on paper use lava from the Etna Volcano in Sicily, and the video documents the lava from the Ajusco Volcano in Mexico. I find this fascinating and wonder if you could tell me about the reason you decide to include lava in this body of work.

FC: Lava, magma, molten rock, molten liquid, molten lava flow, temperatures of over a thousand degrees centigrade, high viscosity, the energy of the earth, the overwhelming power of the earth, the lack of human control, the strength of nature, however you name it, the power of a volcano is the reason I include lava in my work. These are the first two series of Tinta Viva that use lava, the series shown in Bogota did not, and although there are different types of lava, including ferromagnesian, dark in color, and others such as basalt or Pahoehoe lava, the location of the volcano is just determined on my whereabouts, rather than a specific reason. I was in Etna this summer travelling across Sicily, and my studio is in Mexico City (and New York – but there are no volcanoes there). My next series of work also looks at meteorites. I’m interested in the various weight differences of the meteorites from space and of the lava from the earth; we know that lava initiates as a heavy liquid and turns into a light porous rock when it dries. 

AZ: I am further drawn towards your use of materiality, not only the volcanic rocks, inks, LSD, but also of your own blood, Blood A+. Using blood has been seen in the works of Marc Quinn, Tracey Emin, Kiki Smith to name a few, and having seen images your studio, I know that there is a dedicated and profound build up of preparation to execute your work in the way that you do, including the use of blood. I wonder if you could comment on the reason you include your own DNA in your artworks as well as how you prepare for this and how Blood A+ is significant in your practice.

FC: The answer of why is simple but personal; I work with my own blood in response to an accident that took place nearly two decades ago. The initial idea of Tinta Viva, was to give back the amount of blood within a human body in response to this accident, and only once this is done, is the series of Tinta Viva complete; much like an ofrenda. The amount of blood in the average human body is 6 liters…In the short film that Amanda Demme has created, and that was produced by Santiago Garcia Galvan, Amanda manages to tell a glimpse of the narrative, of the story, and therefore the reason I created this series which uses my own DNA. It wasn’t just the car crash but the many years after that absorbed by energy, my sadness and gave me a deeper reason to make the series. The preparation is complex, and something that has taken years to perfect. I work with multiple nurses, I’ve exasperated the number of ways in which blood can be used and preserved and I’ve studied blood types and variations, concluding that Blood A+ dries differently to other blood types, mostly in the colouring but also the speed it dries.

AZ: How does science play a role in Tinta Viva. You mention that the explosions vary between location and that you are interested in the idea of a controlled experiment. How easily are we able to control the explosions, and what are some of the variables that may affect such explosions? How do you resonate with man-made explosions in a time where there is a heartbreaking amount of violence and war, and how does your work define not only the natural explosions of a volcano, but also the human act of destruction. Do you think your work is summarised by comparing nature and human activity. 

Nature will always be more powerful. I like to think that I am working with science, referring more to the extraordinary developments that Scientists are making in technology, in medicine, in aerodynamics, in Space. The controlled experiment is defined by altitude, by wind, by pressure, by the amount of explosive powder. I have always been interested in aeronautics and physics. Human activity and forces of physics has nothing to do with violence and war. I was exposed as a child to fireworks, explosives, I enjoyed playing with these to learn about physics; I used to make cans of tuna fly. In the presentation of Tinta Viva, the explosion and force of the wind is the only power I could find that separates the textures after the explosion of the balloon. I wanted to create the physical force that enables the ink to fly and disattach from the other elements. There is nothing to do with violence and war. It is a release, if anything it removes stress and provides relief. For me it’s like watching a classical concert, when the bass drum enters in a symphony and the sound resonates.

AZ: Your work with the U.N.A.M Universities and laboratories in Mexico City have created new technologies that explore ways in which we hear. Continuing on from your comment on sound resonating within a concert hall, when did you become interested in sound technology and how will you use these spaces? Are you working with architects to currently integrate these sculptures into cities?

Since 2021 I have been developing my career as a contemporary visual artist and working in collaboration with Jorge Galaviz Mexican architect, expert in acoustic architecture and professor at UNAM, with new acoustic sculptures that push the limits of how we listen to sound responding to sound quality, sound installation and enhancing the human hearing experience. From 2001-2021 I worked as a Creative Director, Art Director and Production Manager  and as a result I have an extensive knowledge in film and art, but my strength was in sound and music production. Therefore I want to integrate how we listen to sound within my work. The new sound sculptures use a membrane that absorbs various frequencies. The large scale sculptures can be placed within existing architecture and will change the way that we hear in restaurants, bars, and recording studios. At the moment I am in discussion with Ryan Urban to house a new restaurant and bar in one of these pods on Bowery in New York City. I am very thankful to Jorge and his team who as experts have enabled this development in sound technology. 

AZ: What other series are you working on and what are your future plans? I understand you will open your studio in Mexico City over Zona Maco 2024, a time when many museums and institutions are now visiting the city.

As I briefly mentioned, I have an ongoing series that looks into the metals and materials of meteorites fallen in the Northern Mexican deserts. I hope to work further on this series of work that looks closer into the education of meteoritics and into the metals that are found within these ‘unidintified fallen objects’. Yes, I will open my studio in Mexico City in correspondence with my exhibition at Alchemy Gallery who have a booth at the fair, and with the opening of Zona Maco, I hope you can come!

About Federico Cartas:

Federico Cartas (México, b.1988) uses physics, technology and invention to create complex systems that explore sound, movement and light. With a profound interest in science, cinematography and music, he incorporates all three into his artistic practise. Often working with large scale sculpture and installation, he also exhibits smaller studies, drawings, painting and sculpture that are a bi-product of his kinetic interventions. Working in collaboration with Jorge Galaviz, a professor at the U.N.A.M in Mexico City, his recent acoustic sculptures push the limits of how we listen to sound responding to his interest in sound quality, sound installation and enhancing the human hearing experience. His Meteorite series finds meteorites fallen in the deserts of the Americas: he positions these within high strength lasers to represent the tensions and movement, something also seen in his works on paper. Cartas works between New York and Mexico City.

About Alchemy Gallery:

Alchemy is a process of creation and transformation; the evolution of turning the ordinary into the extraordinary. Alchemy Gallery’s mission is to celebrate that process artistically, by fostering the development of artists at all levels, in all mediums, and championing their art with the right audiences of quality collectors.