Valdés de Hoyos - Cuentos Stories - Löwenpalais Berlin's "Green Heart"

by Wim Wenders (Himmel über Berlin)

"The telling of an untrue or purely invented event, either written or by word of mouth." Only a Story - a jaguar that could have come from the cloister of Cuauhtinchan, a mestizo cloister, taking concrete form on the colonial frescoes, an indigenous claw on the murals of New Spain. In the labyrinth of his personal mythology, the painter can lose his bearings, split among various systems, legacies, and cardinal points. Chilam Balam, in English, the Interpreter of the Jaguar. He who deciphers the secret language of the Masters, the riddles of the Suyua; words that are only a story for the unenlightened public. We are faced with the problem of ancient knowledge, a rite of passage.

The identity of the painter takes root in different legacies. The titles of the paintings build a Tower of Babel. With the multiple languages used in baptizing the canvases, signifiers are hurled about. Paradise: a clipping fixed on this painting from the newspaper el País Dominical includes an ad in German; the donkey has the French word "toucher" written on its haunch, and the protagonist's T-shirt displays the words "My Heaven." To go to heaven one must pronounce the founding word, prior to Babel, the vocals of the mantras or, like this picture suggests, repeat the mythical, magical gesture that negates the spoken word and lineal compréhension. Touching the amulet excites the effectiveness of the original magic.

The Babel-like title, Imagine, weaves a web of interprétations with its diverse meanings in French, Italian, English. "Just imagine, imagine it": the fantasy of the viewer becomes more important than the painting. Image: upon naming the object, we return to the redundancy. "Imagine all the people : idyllic fusion of the codes of communication. The recurring frets in the works of Remigio reflect the maze of the signifiers; in this pernicious thimble the conducting thread may well disappear.

Inédit - offers a reflection on the finality of sacrifice and the possibility of a pictorial redemption. On the via crucis of the painter, referred to here by the hammer and the lamb, the images are in some way embargoed - the forbidding words of the magazine and the tremendous interdiction of the hammer both engage us. Notwithstanding the seriousness of the theme, the painter seeks shelter in the double meaning, in the saving distancing by way of teasîng - "You and I will be together until life overtakes us." According to Remigio, in this Passion the concepts of life and death are ironically interchangeable. The painter redeems himself with his sensual Mexican treatment of doubt. Better to play with the signifiers, with the trompe l'oeil, the jigsaw puzzle of art. From there, the collages. The image uses the text, the newspaper clipping, fragmented, unintelligible. From there, the subtle question marks, the delîberate will to repeat a trivial redundancy, as in ridiculing those who are numb, laughing at the equation between signified and signifier.

" I'm going to tell it all" ("Voy boy a contarles todo"). The humor is silenced, crushed by the Germanic incursion of epistemology. Kunst: art stops being a cognitive option. It transforms itself into a gag over the painter's mouth. The répression is brutal, reminiscent of the films of Kubrick. Art is not light, but rather shadows. lt has stopped being the fiat lux of creation. In the darkness of the canvas, one manages to discern the letters of the alphabet, from A to Z. Letters devoid of syntax and semantics, letters as disperse signs, a weakened system.

The répression of Kunst whose protagonist is gaged by art. Terrible silence of Le Cri whose shriek is repressed by a Talavera "shut-your-mouth-up." The change in technique does not allow evading the question: "Je vais tout vous raconter...." What could this saint-martyr possible tell, a laughable reference to Edvard Munch, whose despair is drowned by a black hand?

Kunst - Mixed media on wood, Munich Germany

Loup: frets and spirals indicate the presence of a labyrinth whose center is accessible only to the initiated. The woman sleepwalker who blindly steps through the labyrinthe of the palace could be Ariana; but her candle and the light that shines from her pilgrimage makes her seem like a priestess, maybe that of Arcano Il. The woman surrounds herself with great authority and blocks entrance to the néophytes. Meanwhile, a small Saint George, with his faithful sword, seeks to liberate us from the beast, from the Minotaur which we carry within. Taurine-man, donkey-man, wolf-man, the loup to be defeated dwells in the labyrinth of our unconscious.

Mitla's frets. The need for sacrifice. This Oaxacan virgin died immolated on the canvas in order to feed the personai mythology of the painter. Cometa: strange bisexual word from the Castilian language. The sacrifice could resuscitate the androgynous being of before the séparation of the genders. Frets. Labyrinth. Migration in search of the mythical Aztlàn.

Seeking the Holy Grail, the ring, Clover: the gigantic clover astonishes the child with its unreachable chalice. Leaves, three by three. The fourth invisible leaf appears on the denim. The epiphany materializes on a prosaic and secular canvas of blue jeans. Clover takes us back to the search for the miracle, but, above all else, signifies the multiplicité of media which serves to situate the artist's work in the present time. The washed denim is comparable to the veil of Veronica.

Ring: on the finger of the novice representing her marriage to God. Golden nuptials of the priestess. Sacrifice. The central hand, naked, still carries the bloody scar left f rom the nail- the ring in not on the ring finger, but on the numb lips of the woman. Ring, the comma of the word that seeks to resuscitate the riddles of Suyua. The circular time of the "katunes" seeks to impose itself upon the lineal time of the crucifixion.

Mask - the counterpoint of the ring reappears. Saturnalian perimeter that limits the 'Talavera plate -- ring worn by another's hand -- paradoxically, the hand is not that of the protagoniste but rather that of a third person who displays that symbol of power. Evil ring like those of the Nibelungen. Also present in this series, the black hand de profundis, imposing penance on the one who removes his mask. The Unconscious-Minotaur prevents us from speaking, screaming, breaking his spell. Will the artist's perseverance manage to liberate him from these hands, from these evils that silence and afflict him?

Another Story - "Warum bin ich ich und nicht Du?" Why the original separation, the expulsion from paradise, the rupture with Genesis? Why the sudden appearance of the Other? And why your otherness? In other times, we were Brauner's Androgyne, who eternally regenerated itself. And Narcissus was not ashamed when he looked at himself in the waters of the twin-love. "Ou se penserait-il mieux que dans les images?" as Bachelard would say.

Mine - the image, reflection of oneself, the painting revisited by psychoanalysis. The artist knows the determinisms of childhood. The use of crayon for this self-portrait allows the painter to return to the time when he was a child. The incandescence, the orange colors, show the way out from the labyrinthe Once the internal Minotaur is defeated, the I comes out of the darkness. The multiple I, the I with superimposed strata, the vermillon I free from the inter-text ( the newspaper clipping dies beneath the oil ), the I, veil of sanctity. Appropriation of the reflection, of the face, of Remystery.

In zwei Ausstellungen werden Werke von Remigio Valdés de Hoyos und von Dieter Finke gezeigt, der eine ist Künstler aus Mexiko, der andere aus Deutschland. Zwei Orte, aber ein Projekt. Eine mexikanische Institution präsentiert den Maler und Bildhauer Finke, eine deutsche den Maler und Keramiker Valdés de Hoyos. Zwei Künstler im Austausch. Damit wird eine Tradition fortgesetzt, die dem beidseitigen Kennenlernen zweier unterschiedlicher Kulturen dient und zudem die beiden Metropolen und Partnerstädte Berlin und Mexiko-Stadt näher bringt.

In diesem Jahrhundert haben deutscher Expressionismus und Realismus in der mexikanischen Kunst, andererseits Wandmalerei und sozialkritische Grafik aus Mexiko in deutscher Kunst ihre Spuren hinterlassen. Mit den Werken von Beckmann, Kirchner, Grosz und Kollwitz dürfte man in Mexiko so vertraut sein wie mit denen von Orozco, Rivera, Siqueiros und Tamayo in Deutschland. Beispielhaft hat sich Geben und Nehmen auch in Arbeit und Einfluß einzelner deutscher Exilanten niedergeschlagen, die in Mexiko vor der Nazidiktatur Zuflucht fanden.

Wie kein anderer hat nach dem Krieg vor allem Mathias Goeritz - Maler, Bildhauer und Architekt - in Mexiko als Mittler zwischen den Kontinenten und mit seinem Werk in beide Richtungen gewirkt. Mexikanische Künstler zu Gast in Deutschland wie zuletzt der daad-Stipendiat Gabriel Orozco in Berlin - auch das bestärkt die gegenseitigem Bande.

Neben Austausch auf der individuellen Ebene bildet der institutionelle eine notwendige Ergänzung und eine wesentliche Basis zum Verständnis des anderen. In beiden deutschen Staaten fand mexikanische Kunst in vielen Ausstellungen ein breites Publikum, und deutsche Kunstschätze reisten über den Ozean. Das vereinte Deutschland, so steht zu hoffen, wird diese Tradition fortsetzen. Mexiko als Schwerpunkt der Frankfurter Buchmesse von 1992 bildete einen verheißungsvollen Auftakt. Mexikanische Museen zeigen immer wieder Gegenwartskunst aus Deutschland, und kürzlich erhielt der Maler Jörg Immendorf den angesehenen Preis des Museums für Zeitgenössische Kunst in Monterrey.

Die Ausstellungen von Remigio Valdés de Hoyos und Dieter Finke stellen einen direkten, zeitlich parallelen Austausch aus. sie stehen für die wachsende Kontinuität und Intensität der Beziehungen und die gegenseitige Bereitschaft, mehr voneinander zu erfahren und einander besser zu verstehen.