Enrique Fernández Cervantes / ARTIST STATEMENT | > Español

The artist and the vocation of storytelling
Some time ago, I was invited to see a performance presented by a small theatre company called Xlthlx.  The title of the show was The Distance of the Moon and was based on a short story from a book by the Italian writer Italo Calvino.  The first reaction of the public who saw the event was a mix of curiosity and puzzlement because of the unusual name of the theatre company (which, by the way, is the name of a character in Calvino’s book), the magical quality of the play and the peculiar way in which it was presented. That night, the public witnessed a wonderfully crafted show that relied in its entirety on the use of abstract light design, special puppetry and live harp music.

Calvino uses words that join together the real and the invented by creating a unique world where tangible reality coexists with allegorical, magical and surreal elements.  This interaction between reality and fantasy is imbued in Calvino’s stories and in the works of some writers and artists from Latin America who have been labeled as Magical Realists.  Magic Realism merges realistic portrayals of ordinary events and elements of fantasy and myth.  This artistic genre, which began as a predominantly Latin American literary movement and has extended to the visual arts, transforms the common and the everyday into the fantastic and the unreal and creates in the process a rich, often perplexing world that is at once familiar and dreamlike.  Art of this type is an important inspiration for my work.

The director of the puppet show induced in the mind of the public visual images that were at the same time marvelous and intriguing. However, she did not paint the whole picture to us.  Instead, she presented only selected fragments of Calvino’s work that stimulated our curiosity and desire to know more about the fantasy-filled stories of the writer. Sometimes, artists deliberately do exactly that: they choose not to excessively analyze a particular subject, even if they have the knowledge and the competence to do so.  They simply explore the subject to a certain degree and give the public the task to examine, decipher and understand the information contained in the art.  Artists communicate ideas and the public interprets those ideas and, at times, is touched by them.

I am not an expert in anthropology, sociology or any other science, even though my work many times reflects issues related to those areas.  My experience and knowledge in those fields is very limited.  I am an artist and my main objective is to communicate.  Like many other artists, through my art I tell stories that are not quite complete.  For example, in the literary world, Italo Calvino created Xlthlx and Georg Büchner wrote about his character Woyzeck.  Juán Rulfo made up Pedro Páramo and in the same manner Carlos Fuentes invented Artemio Cruz.  I like to create characters and make up names for them, too.  Only, instead of appearing in text, my characters exist visually in my paintings and photographs.  Sometimes, even nameless characters live in my artwork.  Some of them dwell in places with non-existing addresses in the company of other characters or in complete isolation. When I paint and take photographs, some of my themes are constant while others take different directions.  Some stories complement each other and a few of them stand on their own.  My artwork is a collection of stories that have no theme in common.  This makes it challenging to label my artworks or to place them within specific categories. Just as some people prefer to read about a variety of subjects, I also like to create images that explore multiple ideas and issues.  I want to fill my works with color, light, abstraction, magic and some mystery in the same way that the director of the puppet show and the artists and writers whom I admire have done.

My paintings and photographs are the tools I use to tell stories – both the ones that have been written already and the ones waiting to be invented.  I feel that a great part of my own self gets immersed into my images.  It is gratifying to me when someone – a “reader” of my stories- finds in my work a little part where they can also see themselves represented.  Perhaps, they can find themselves in the work or maybe they can find characters from stories they heard in the past or stories they invented themselves.  When that happens, everybody involved in the process has brought about a meeting of never-ending stories that are told and retold many times in many places by those who have an interest in the vocation of storytelling.