What a ridiculous name, man!
How could you name an exhibition like that after so much time without doing anything...?
(Phone silence)
"Call it 22"; that's the day you were born and the number of years it's been since you last exhibited.
"22, man." - The Crazy One.
That's how my eldest daughter spoke to me on the phone, 1,200 kilometers away, when I told her I had found a space in Buenos Aires. - "I'm opening in September!" - "The exhibition will be called..."
"Maybe" - I said.
I always say that when something surprises me, and I'm not convinced otherwise.
That's how this exhibition got its name: "Veinti2" (Twenty2).
And there, thanks to the internet, I read much more about the number 22.
Want me to tell you? No way. If you're interested, look it up yourselves and read according to your own interests.
In short, to the point: I was born on March 22nd, and it's been 22 years since I last exhibited.
And what happened in these 22 years?
A part of my life.
And why now? Why this?
- If I knew.
At first, I make things by hand to ease myself. If I find them interesting, I share them. There’s a risk there and a possible reward. Life, right?
I never managed to feel that "art for art's sake." Anyone who lives it that way has my admiration.
How do you get here without any references?
I was born on the day I mentioned.
My father, almost illiterate, had an innate sense of aesthetic abstraction. I realized this when, in my late childhood, I saw what he wrote while solving some specific problem in his mind. He'd fill pages with his signature, one under the other, from "the banker's" to reducing it to a few lines, curves, dots.
My mother, with just a primary school education, always signed the same because she dismantled problems with perseverance.
Each gave me something. My father made me aware of the visual aspect. My mother taught me to turn things over and over until they happened.
My father would nap. My mother would gently warn me, "Don’t you dare wake up your father! If you wake him up, I’ll break everything!"
I, an only child, silently, at three years old, would lay my belly on the cold tiles of the patio and start copying little figures into a notebook. I remember the stratospheric aviator. Always thinking of flying. That’s all I remember from that time.
Or maybe more? Yes. When, at six, I wanted to study music, my mother told me, "That’s useless. What will you live off when you grow up?" I finished primary school and, before entering secondary school, I earned a certificate as a Professional Typist. I traded the piano for a typewriter keyboard. Just in case, you know, to avoid starving.
22 years later, I met the mother of my four children. Back then, she was studying Philosophy and Literature and had to do a practical assignment at the Juan Castagnino Museum of Fine Arts in Rosario, my hometown. She suggested we meet there for the first time.
What’s wrong with this woman? What a ridiculous idea! Museums are for idiots and lazy people!
... But she’s really cute... Damn it!
I went.
Inside the museum, I wandered. And I looked. And I looked again.
"These people aren’t idiots," I told myself.
And that’s when I started getting hooked.
They were no longer fools, but I had enough antibodies against them. I was looking to make a living and, unknowingly, to get infected.
We moved to Neuquén, got married, and worked to make ends meet.
One night, after a movie, at one of those kiosks open until dawn, I saw a small Chilean booklet explaining how different artistic movements viewed a vase, a glass, and an apple. When I finished it, I had a fever and was an asymptomatic carrier. I memorized all the names of the psychiatric patients and their wards.
With a fierce affection for others, I started painting to spread it as much as possible...
Educated people told me what I painted was crap. But if you grow up with a mother like mine, you don’t get upset or depressed by such statements. So, deeply frustrated, I kept painting.
In those Neuquén years, I bought, read, and consulted as much as I could. When the magazine "Argentine Painters of the 20th Century" appeared at the kiosks, I didn’t miss a single issue. It was 1978 or '79. They all interested me, but I identified with a guy named... Ernesto Deira. Besides what I read and saw in the magazine, I knew nothing about him.
One night, dining with some doctor friends, I told them about a painter I thought was amazing.
"Oh, we know Cacho Deira, his brother."
"He worked with us in El Chocón as an architect from the beginning. If you’re up for it, Ernesto lives in Buenos Aires. We can ask Cacho to tell him about you."
A week later, I had Ernesto Deira's phone number.
I called him.
"Nice to meet you!" - he said. - "If you'd like to come and meet us, that's fine."
I couldn’t believe it.
"Maybe you can teach me something," I said, in my ignorance.
"Maybe. Bring me some of your work, and we'll see."
"But I paint on chapadur..." Silence.
"Well, take photos of it and bring them."
Two weeks later, I was in Buenos Aires with an album of eight photos.
He looked at them, looked at me, and said:
"Ah, but you do whatever you want!"
I was staring, not at him, but at the paintings on all the walls of that house near Congress. Many of them were the ones that had fascinated me in the magazine. That was enough for me. I had seen some of Ernesto Deira's work. So I didn’t say a word.
After my silence, he continued: "Did you bring scenography paper? Charcoal?"
I didn’t know what those were.
Other attendees lent me some. There was a nude model, and he told me, "Draw."
And I drew. It was Tuesday.
At the end of the class, Deira looked at the drawing and said, "Look, since you’ve come from so far, we’ll do this: you’ll come one week a month and attend all four sessions."
Fall, winter, and spring passed in 1985.
At the end of that year, I won the First Prize at the Bahía Blanca Stock Exchange Salon. In 1986, Ernesto died. I cried inconsolably.
Months later, not knowing how to go on, I began drawing and painting again.
I submitted a piece in Neuquén and won Third Prize. One of the judges was Luis Felipe Noé. He asked the organizers about some guy he thought was a doctor or something and who used to go to Deira’s place once a month to draw. They called my office and said, "There’s a Mr. Noé here asking for you."
We met that afternoon. We went to chat by the Limay River. We sat face to face, leaning on tree trunks at the shore, and cried almost the entire afternoon.
As night approached, I took him to the airport.
By then, he was Yuyo to me. He said, "Look, if you want, you can come to my studio once a month like you did with Ernesto."
I went to Tacuarí Street. There was paint everywhere. Disciples, students, experimentation, recklessness—everything. It was clear that with my scenography paper and charcoals, I had no place there. I stayed until night, listening and watching. Then Yuyo and I stayed talking. I told him I couldn’t bring all my paintings to Buenos Aires, and he said, "Nora and I are going to a little restaurant two blocks away. Wanna come?"
That night, Yuyo and Nora initiated me.
So it went. I would call him, travel, stay in the studio watching and listening. At the end of the day, we would go out to eat and talk until two or three in the morning.
What I learned about "being art" is impossible for me to articulate.
Meanwhile, in Neuquén, three artists I barely knew formed the Patagonia Group and invited me to join. "Wow! Of course!"
We held collective and individual exhibitions and sent works to Salons. We were almost always selected and often won prizes.
A snowstorm closed Bariloche Airport. Some Colombian skiers landed in Neuquén to continue by land. They decided to visit the Emilio Saraco Municipal Art Gallery. There was a solo exhibition of mine. A year later, I was invited to exhibit in Bogotá. I sold well, and no one said my work was crap anymore.
Life goes on, and the children grow up. And what will they live off when they’re older?
When my third child left for university in Rosario, reality knocked at my door, and profitable work became the morphine for the incurable illness.
That’s how much of these 22 years passed.
A large part, some parts, no part... the part I want to tell you about is how the search for volume began.
I was working productively with small plastic sheets until what always happens to the carrier happened: I got distracted. The piece got ruined, and I pulled it from the hot vacuum former. The work, I mean. And I was also fuming. Since it was soft, I bent it a bit (my dad). Maybe a bit more (my mom). A little less (my dad and mom). "There!" (my dad). I cooled it and continued with my lucrative work. Before going home, I looked at it again and thought, "There's something here!" And I started saving small plastic squares. Hundreds. Now thousands.
You’ll see a painting from the last three years, marking my return to that activity, and several volumes, which are my new pursuit. The rest is from 22 years ago. And even further back.
Thank you for coming, and I hope you enjoy it.
Everything’s for sale, except me.
Rubén Tomatis.
Trucked XIV
Acrylic on canvas - Size: 48 x 48.4 in. - Year: 2024
Trucked III
Acrylic on canvas - Size: 35.4 x 39.3 in. - Year: 1988
Sidereal II
Plastic Material - Size: 23.6 x 19.6 x 7.8 in. - Year: 2024
Download the exhibition catalogue in PDF (High resolution)
