Geometries and patterns were the axes that Santiago Estellano marked as guidelines in the works that are presented today in MORAR. Through the collage technique, he constructs images that challenge the gaze. With meticulousness and judgment, the artist chooses the lines that will mark a limit between what we see and what we think we see.

 

Such is the case of those works in whose composition the Penrose triangle is found. Known as impossibility in its purest form, this object was created by Swedish artist Oscar Reutersvärd[1] and rediscovered by physicist Roger Penrose[2] who gave it its popular description.

 

In the center of the room and in height you can see a pyramid with a triangular base whose sides are made up of the Penrose triangle. The impossible image object has been possible to generate from a 3D composition. The decision that its sides are covered by a mirror imposes on us the obligation to recognize ourselves as part of something much more complex than we can describe with words. Because by rotating our body in space, perspective modifies our mode of perception: we see and do not see a single closed shape, we see and do not see the angles that make it up as an object.

 

What then can we see with certainty?

 

We have always wanted to classify and place everything around us in definable places. That gives us the peace of mind necessary to survive. If we can name it, then it exists in that form and context in which the words contain it.

 

When faced with works of contemporary art, this need arises and keeps us in constant tension. Perhaps the fact of seeing images that, like Estellano's analog collages, are themselves constructed from other images, increases the nervousness of the minds and souls that need to intellectualize what they see. And even more so, it is curious that when it comes to geometries, and this being a branch of mathematics that studies the properties and magnitudes of figures in the plane or in space, it turns out - as a work of art - so enigmatic.

 

Perhaps the idea of ​​archeology of the work of art that Giorgio Agamben takes up closer to our days will help us from that already proposed by Michel Foucault: “the inquiry into the past is nothing but the projected shadow of an interrogation directed at the present.” Are they So the images intervened through the collage sign of that question?

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On the library table several unframed works reflect Estellano's rich production. On one side of this calmer space, the intimate atmosphere of the forest is transformed into the faithful image of Thoreau's Walden. Each fraction of the work amplifies the meaning of the experience lived by the American writer, poet and philosopher, who lived for two years, two months and two days in a cabin built by himself.

 

Let us consider the possibility that the works exhibited today in the museum are portals. They can be magical, energetic or as defined by technology: forms of easy access to a series of resources related to a topic aimed at solving specific information needs in a particular way.

 

We could also think of them as those entrance doors to cities or temples at times when monumental architectures were at great distances from each other.

 

The Arc de Triomphe created by Dürer at the request of Maximilian I is the protagonist of the work that is found before entering the library. This commission that the famous German artist receives after portraying the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire is a dense image dedicated to glory and power, loaded with genealogical and historical information, whose objective was to portray the achievements of the Habsburg lineage. Estellano's decision to take this image and make many more of it could be read as a well-deserved tribute to one of the most famous artists of the German Renaissance while paving the way for the narrative value assigned to the detailed symbols used by the author.

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Ishtar, one of the eight access gates to the Marduk temple in Babylon - fifteen meters high and twenty-five meters wide - will undoubtedly have shocked those who contemplated it. Built five centuries before Christ by Nebuchadnezzar II, this adobe wall covered in glazed ceramic stood out for the blue color of lapis lazuli which made it unique and unmistakable among the reddish tones of the surrounding walls.

 

It is impossible for me, and perhaps it is also impossible for anyone else who has had the opportunity to stand in front of the gate of Babylon, to express in words the sensations that this human construction produces. If it is shocking today, what must the inhabitant of Babylon have felt all those centuries ago?

 

The Portals of Santiago Estellano propose to take us to that place, to the great questions that humanity repeatedly faces and that fortunately art invites us and helps us navigate.

 

 

Cecilia Medina