STRING MUSIC

It is difficult, or at least uncomfortable, to view Ontivero’s images only once; to take them in with a single glance. It is almost impossible to contemplate them as part of a casual stroll around an art gallery, without the insistent need to return to them once again. This goes beyond questions of personal interest, like or dislike. Rather, it is down to the unstable relation between foreground and background, each of which insists on holding our gaze.

From a distance, each image is a sharp silhouette cut out upon a uniform background colour. The silhouette is that of a living thing, either whole or in part. It may come from another time - a heraldic figure or Pompeian mural - or be purely graphic, such as the miniature of an illuminated manuscript. Apparent repetitions within the series invite the search for a common thread, yet this proves elusive or inaccessible.

In many cases, the silhouette is also an object with weight and volume that floats in a void, leaving the projection of a shadow as the marker of its presence. Yet the shadow is a dark oval, the geometry of which does not coincide with the light obstructed by the form of the floating matter.

The silhouette is also the cutting-out of a space that becomes a stage curtain. Through the opening, we spy on elements of a scene. We can observe people using 20th Century machines to talk, register sound, draw, study, practice or exercise. Occasionally, we may see animals instead.

The scenarios are not, in themselves, intimate. They are rather neutral or unimportant. Intimacy is created through our act of spying. These innocent scenes are forced into mystery and the observer into a spy through the simple act of their involuntary coming-together through the window of the silhouette.

The only possible reading is that of the passage of time suggested by the actions themselves: the time it takes to write a line in a notebook, to complete a ballet movement or to turn some dials. The chosen moment does not appear to be significant in itself, rather the opposite. With all the elements of open-ended roleplay, the images refract the narrative possibilities.

There are signs that reference an age of technology and art, yet these are simultaneously dismantled by their promiscuous coexistence with other, seemingly anachronistic, markers. Through the silhouette of a medieval griffin, we spy upon a woman working a film projector. The clash of eras seems to be random. Perhaps it is.

The binding together of Ontivero’s imagery creates a hive of interlocking and alternative ways of seeing. These open, close and contradict themselves with each successive wave of our returning gaze.  Even where the image can be located in time, there remains the unease of being unable to view it as a unified whole.

If we look at the scene, the silhouette that frames it vanishes.
If we look at the silhouette, the scene beyond stretches out like a skin.

Roque Larraquy