Rafa Forteza

Black+Black+ "It is an unbroken line, inscribed by interrupting itself." – Maurice Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation Seven canvases are on display at Galería ENLACE. All are recent works, dated between 2022 and 2024, of medium size, painted by Rafa Forteza using mixed media on canvas. This is the first exhibition in Peru of the Mallorcan painter, sculptor, and printmaker, who has an extensive and renowned career. Rafa Forteza’s painting is both an aesthetic pleasure and a challenge posed to the viewer. There is the enjoyment of our eyes, which move rapidly across the surface of these canvases, captivated; and the joy of our bodies, which wander from one painting to the next, continually looking back to focus again on a detail they only now recognize. None of this requires explanation—no one questions the reasons for their delight. Another aspect of these paintings, their challenge, does call for some hypotheses and a focus on certain nuances of this exhibition. The first observer of a canvas is always the artist himself, who looks at what he has just created, though he cannot see his painting as any other viewer would; no matter how much he tries, he simply cannot. He steps back, lets hours or even days pass. Then he returns, approaches, steps back again, moving forward and backward to peer between shapes and colors. Is looking at oneself even more complex than looking at another? In the first case, the risk is falling into the subtle and cunning traps of the ego; in the second, it is about avoiding the inevitable biases, as remote as they are ingrained, whose origins we may not know and whose reasons remain unspoken. "The painter ‘offers his body,’ says Valéry, and indeed, one cannot imagine how a Spirit alone could paint. By lending his body to the world, the painter transforms the world into painting." – Maurice Merleau-Ponty. And this is the challenge that Rafa Forteza presents to the viewer in this exhibition. He offers you the opportunity to stand before these seven canvases. Also, perhaps, to experience the distance between yourself and the other—the one who painted what you are observing—inch by inch, embarking on a journey that never seems to end, as it moves continuously, up and down, side to side. A relentless interplay of vision and movement, inseparable and indescribable. "May he know that he displaces nothing in the order of things. [...] May he remain still, called by the game to be the partner of someone who does not play..." – Maurice Blanchot, L.C.I. Finally, you realize that what you are looking at is your [other] 'self' gazing at a Rafa Forteza painting. One of two things will happen: either you continue multiplying this situation infinitely, like two mirrors endlessly reflecting each other, or you step out of the loop and conclude, "Here I am." A circumstance that is not so simple. While pronouncing it may be easy, separating this ‘self’ from our everyday existence—fast-paced, hyperconnected, and at times maddening—is far less obvious. As difficult as separating the color from the stroke that places it on the canvas. How can a saxophone solo be isolated from the phrasing of the drums and bass upon which it overlays, improvising and shifting the foundational rhythm in bebop? On its own, would it still be present and sustain its presence? Five of the canvases in this exhibition include the word ‘Estancias’ in their titles, followed by a specific number. These are very particular places where Rafa Forteza takes us, allowing us to ‘stand in front of’ them. The viewer’s position—something that, we repeat, is no small matter. In their challenge, Forteza’s paintings are demanding, both in composition and, above all, in rhythm, which incorporates multiple registers: deviations, escapes, and retreats. Some apparent concessions to figuration (but is that really so?), straight lines, and a world of circles that are vortices. Colors that pull us toward the depths of these circles, where we might, at last, find stillness—until we resume the journey. In Estado de gracia I and Estado de gracia II, Rafa Forteza draws us toward these vortices. The colors pull us like the ocean’s current, dragging us inward. Peering closely at the surface of these highly polyphonic canvases is just the first step. What follows is going a bit further, embarking on a journey. Again, it is vision and movement. The title of this exhibition explicitly references a poem by Paul Celan, The Journey, in which we read: "From your black eye, the blackest eye. // There is a room where a team of horses stops for your heart. Your hair would like to wave in the wind as you leave—this is forbidden to it. Those who stay behind and wave goodbye do not know." Rafa Forteza’s paintings invite us to be present but, at the same time, to dig a little deeper ("from your black eye, the blackest eye"), bringing our vision into motion over the canvas. Only in this way is the circle completed—through the viewer’s experience and attention, that is, perception. What matters is not judgment but conversation. A conversation that ignites and keeps spinning, reaching out to other readings and other worlds, in a frenetic dance where bodies touch; or in a simple round where hands hold bodies. Circles and forms, their colors imbuing them with controlled dynamism, like a carefully rehearsed dance to which we surrender, letting go of the unnecessary. If everything around us moves while we remain still, we will have found the eye of the storm—a quiet garden where we can be with ourselves. "Try, indifferent circle, to close yourself just once, even for an instant, so that I may know where you begin and where you end." – Maurice Blanchot, L.C.I. Breaking, at once, the rigid boundaries between figuration and abstraction, Forteza includes faces whose noses stretch to inhale cigar smoke, legs that support eyes, circles that are not circumferences but whirlpools. Lines that are strokes, whose sets generate fields of force (and their force is, of course, color). The painter’s vision is in motion, and rhythm prevails over any other aspect of his canvases. The beauty of the body resides in the imperfection of the flesh, which touch transforms into ecstasy; then, at last, the eye can rest. Looking is no longer necessary. One listens better with closed eyes. And we surrender to moving just a little further. "Leaving / without leaving." A whirlwind carries us from the unspeakable to the inexplicable. From A Night in Tunisia to this exhibition, where one must BE, and finally, here we are. Like in José Ángel Valente’s poem, which allows us to interrupt this text: TO BE. Not to do. In the entire space of being to be, to remain, to leave without leaving to nothing. To no one. To nothing. —Francesco Giaveri