Imagination allows an enlightened object to transform its essence and shift its underlying paradigm at the will of the artist. For Nicolás Guzmán (Veracruz, Mexico, 1983) shining light is the means to reconfigure the creativity of whoever wishing to express themselves, even if in order to do so, they have to dismantle the Western tradition in painting and suggest a new one from the shadows.

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For the past decade, Guzmán has kept his work Untitled due to its indescribable nature. As an abstract artist, the images he materializes in oil keep a close relationship with reality, yet they do not signify it; his paintings depict the imagery that remains in darkness as a means of social, emotional, and ideological factors that are constantly under deconstruction.

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In the artist's most recent pictorial work, illumination is reduced to a glimpse due to the dark character of the painting. As an initiation, Guzmán begins his relationship (creative and intimate) with the dark space after sacrificing a 19th century painting of a saint. The ashes of that painting, mixed with varnish, give him the enlightening depth of his current pieces. The dark space is a light that does not hit the end but expands to the infinite.

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Several possibilities of being are present in Guzmán's artistic creation. This has led him to make a performance in which he intervenes his own black ceramic installation. Guzman approaches the materiality of art and becomes dark matter, he—transformed into a bird—surrounds surrounds the very foundations he imagined: this is how he describes the sway of his constant theoretical and sensitive exploration of the antithesis of color.

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In the manner of a manifesto, Guzmán creates Las Plañideras and unfolds the counterpoint of the black pigment with the remaining of his multidisciplinary work. In this short film, the artist delivers symbolisms that encode both Mexican culture and the mysticism of the human being, opening a space in reality, intended to receive the ecosystem of his work.

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The death of color expands the mystery of life. Nicolás Guzmán looks inward and exposes himself intimately through artistic expression, recognizing his role as a poet in the conveyance of his feelings. A human being, the birth of the Universe and its dark matter.

 

Antonio Moreno