Serene faces, enlightened figures in actual or mental spaces, matter and graphics overlapped in thick weaves that lean on who is watching. “They are not aesthetics games. I know that if I move someone with my painting, I do it in a deep level, which has to do not only with the shapes and colours. I believe in a spirit and in a soul, and I believe that we communicate from there. We do not need only of a religion because we have our own resources, and this is one of them.”

The value of a piece of work does not lie in being beautiful, or surprising, or genial-the artist says- but in the psychic process that begins when it is looked at; in the associations, feelings, images and intimate matters that arise within the observer.

“I think that what impacts the people of a piece of work is not the carefulness of the technique, not even what has to do with me, but a notion that we all have, a deep question about the absurd of being. We share an unconscious, an ultimate sensation, and when one works freely, that background shows up, that collective substrate where our individuality lies. A lot of painting is done trying to make it in the most perfect way, telling the other exactly what he is seeing and what he has to see. I believe in the imperfection of painting, in the errors, in the footprints of what is not there, of what is unfinished. That is the space where the other comes in, where the message opens up and allows the search of senses of our own.”

That the painting has a life of its own, that the artists are much less interesting. Sol Halabí resists the self referential discourse with the same arguments that advocates the painting as a complete language, of multiple resources to involve intellectual, intuitive, perceptive and motion capabilities. Conscious and unconscious, matter and spirit. Her materials and recurrent subjects share prominence in images and situations. Water, symbols, baby faces, ageless beings. Beeswax, tar. Backgrounds where she can exploit the ultimate reason. “I enter the workshop and I do not think of anything else. It is freed space and time to do what I feel like doing, everything counts, and that that is generated is very strong. The image asks for, and what begins to appear, the relationship with the piece of work, is stronger than what I want to do. Each painting is a story. I can not make several at the same time , and each one absorbs me entirely. Until it is finished. And then, happiness is such, so plentiful, that I start dancing on my own”.

Texto catologue: “Sol Halabi paintings”
Centre of Contemporary Arts
Córdoba, Argentin

Sol Halabi

De agua y bosques

July 16th - august 26th, 2009

Works

Gustavo Acosta

Preguntas al Espejo

(Questions to the Mirror)

Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Panamá (MAC)

June 25th - July 30th, 2009

(+more)