Bernardo Ortiz: A tumult of vacillations

Bernardo Ortiz: A tumult of vacillations

In A tumult of vacillations [Um tumulto de titubeios], an exhibit by the Colombian artist Bernardo Ortiz, his career-long concern resurfaces: on the one hand, looking at the world through drawing, and occasionally, the word-image relationship. Not only is this tension inscribed into each piece, but it reveals something about his worldview. This show at Luisa Strina gallery is underpinned by this lingering inquiry regarding what drawing means, what its materials are, and what events make it possible. In each featured piece, the materials, shapes and lines aren't casual: everything is carefully laid out in space. We could even argue that, taken together, the entire set constitutes a wandering drawing, to the extent that drawing implies constantly rehearsing a way of seeing.

In his work there is also an insistence in perceiving accidents, that which cannot be controlled. Many of his pieces embrace what we might call mistakes: drawings that had been lost for years, stored away, and that later reappeared, charged with new meanings. Even the materials themselves participate in this wandering. They are chosen by him with the rigor and the precision of someone with a gaze like an architect who's nevertheless also interested in the supports' own lives. The white paper doesn't exist. The paper isn't a neutral backdrop: it breathes, it undulates, it ages. The paints he experiments with are also storied: they settle, they dilute, they transform. Nothing remains intact. Even a stain that emerges as the years pass as a result of humidity or prolonged confinement ceases to be a flaw and converts into an event. It is neither corrected nor concealed: it integrates. Through this gesture, the drawing does not shield itself from time.

For us, the artwork also functions as a mirror to his gaze. It invites, and even forces us, to contemplate and consider it intently. The paradox in facing each piece is the fact that what we initially perceive as structure is simply the inscription of the fast-paced, the simultaneous, the confusing, and the anachronic in life. His work isn't systematic nor scientific; it doesn't require a fixed sequence. There is an interplay: the structure can always be rearranged: it can start from the penultimate, go back to the start, change up the order. This isn't a scaffolding designed to underpin something, but rather an abstract, diagrammatic layout capable of moving multiple times. In this motion lies its potency. It does not exhaust meaning, but leaves an open space for change.

In other words, what appears as order is really the mark of life itself, which never presents itself homogeneously, let alone predictably: his work accounts for the multiple, for an experience built on superimposed layers, on fragments that account for a contemporary condition marked by dispersion. His works document his own day-to-day experiences. His daily appointments, fragments of readings and images that have accompanied him, coexist without hierarchy and, indeed, in this sense, in introducing a biographical aspect, the artwork doesn't strive to be a confession, but converts into a testimonial of simultaneity. The result can never be construed as synthesis or abstraction; it must be understood as superimposition: each piece underpins, at once, technique and calculation, but also unpredictability and memory. His insistence on drawing is precisely this, as he himself argues: "only through it there is the possibility of precision, even in things that aren't precise," like life itself.

In this sense, to draw is to usher in an experience of the world; each drawing creates a novel fact. Although there is method and structure, there is also speculation. Hence, it isn't casual that the artist should circle around and play between word and image: drawing becomes text and text becomes drawing. And although there seems to be no suspicion as it relates to the word, as the empire of meaning is attributed to it, here, it presents itself differently. Its seeming stability cracks; meaning is no longer stationary, and it begins to move. In this rotation, as drawing averts clarity and the word embraces its ambiguity, there is no choice but to learn to see anew. We are accustomed to having both words and images largely address vision; however, in this game, they force the other senses to become involved, as well as emotion and memory.

In A tumult of vacillations, I also think of that which we cannot fully perceive or understand. It isn't simply about acknowledging that meaning is always hidden, but about accepting that it's unattainable. Let us for a moment recall the myth of the cave, where the representation of reality remains always in the shadows, always concealed. Here, what matters least is knowing what's really in the background or how this image is created; what really matters is to always be expectant of what the shadows show, albeit incompletely.

In a text written many years ago, Bernardo argued that this effort to understand, and dare I say, to draw, implies recognizing and widening one's distance from reality rather than bridging it. He likened it to the difference between a near-sighted person who chooses to get surgery and one who would rather keep wearing glasses. There are times, he said, when one may prefer to see the world in a bit of a blur. But what does this mean, after all? Drawing doesn't consist merely of rendering visible what was already there. Rather, it allows what we usually do not see to be revealed. The mastery of great draftsmen doesn't lie in portraying something as an easily recognizable object; on the contrary, it lies in allowing us to witness how something becomes visible. It is about recognizing the dimension of that which becomes invisible even when it manifests itself.

In confronting his work, it is no longer worth inquiring what lurks behind the lines. I would hazard to argue that, through drawing, Bernardo Ortiz brings about an experience of blindness. To draw isn't to affirm a safe image of the world, but to cross a threshold of uncertainty. Hence, all that's left in the image is vacillation, indecision in light of the possibility of saying something.

— Ximena Gama 

Translated from Portuguese by Gabriel Pomerancblum