THE PERCUSSIONIST

Solo exhibition of paintings Artist and curator: Conchi Álvarez

When we think of a percussionist, we often associate this role as depending on an audience.

Such a premise disappears in this series in which the artist and curator has stripped down the percussionist in order to be able to penetrate and scrutinise the rich and deep inner world of a musician which is laconically defined by the Real Academia Española (the Spanish equivalent of the Oxford dictionary) as “a person who plays percussion instruments”.

The painter has carried out an exhibition discourse in which she seeks to awake in the visitor of the exhibit the believe that the figure of the percussionist could have emerged from one of the magna opera of the great Hopper.  The seclusion of the figure, the psychological impact of the character, the loneliness of the musician whose instrument is part of him, and the introspection, all entail a Hopper-like atmosphere in which the protagonist, in the words of Ivo Kranzfelder, is immersed in their own constellation, and seldom interacts with the spectator. In these compositions there is a “singular combination of both distance and attraction which fascinates and baffles at the same time”.

As with what happens with Hopper´s characters, our percussionist hides far more than what he shows, thus piquing our intrigue and unleashing the desire of to wonder what his thoughts are, and what is happening. Creating the yearning to be able to enter the picture in order to know/discover more, overpassing the limits of our perception.

However, whilst the atmosphere is Hopper-esque…. The lights and colour are most definitely flamenco. Because the interpretations of Chico Fargas, the percussionist, breathe flamenco poetry, of the sort that Dolores Pantoja describes as “releasing universal feelings such as love, dislike, loneliness, pain, the smallness of man before Nature, social inequality, or impotence before a final destination”. And this is because we find ourselves with an artist who also is a composer, a creator with a duende, a certain inkling which transcends far further than the soul, belonging to a saga of Andalusian musicians. Chico Fargas incarnates, in Andalusian-style, the loneliness of Hopper´s characters.

As with most flamenco artist, in him we see that passion and emotion bypasses all intellectual, and has a raging and powerful individuality, which seeks the singularisation of Me, Myself and I, as a consequence of moving between a collective world of expression. In this series of paintings, we can reflect this personal assertion of the musician and creator in which the painter has surprised him in intimate and solo moments, where all moods are reflected

In conclusion, putting in his mouth  the verses of Goyes Narváez,

 “Percussionist of silence; nothing more

I wish to be”.

THE PERCUSSIONIST (detail)

Acrylic on panel

100 x 75 cm