Testimonies

A cupboard of characters

In the arduous technical and academic formation seen in Gustavo Machado´s recent work underlies a graceful, spontaneous, swift and well-defined expression. His strokes are delicate and steady, especially in watercolor painting which demands absolute freedom and precision in content, form and composition in order to transmit emotions, sensations and static virtues.

He magnifies what he assimilated in different watercolor and oil painting courses with teachers like Gustavo Alanis, José Chávez and Enrique Climent, who had distinct provocative solutions by means of a flat or pastose surface and a relief from the mentioned artists.

The whole combination is examined trough Gustavo Machado's individual instinct and screen; with the so-called experiences of his mentors, he expresses his substance and joy through the handling of bright colors: reds, yellows, greens, blues, sepias, purples, all brilliantly and artistically stamped; harmonious and in good taste.

The wise implementation of ink drawings that marries into the watercolor painting and mixed techniques are the significant aesthetic expression, the seal, the imprint of this young pictorial artist.

The iconography and formal imagery in the recent work which the author happily carried over into abstraction; in the design and advertising of singular and enriching codes, Machado is virginal, new within his own psychic and plastic conception.

They are representations of beings emerging from the beginning, the essentials, just like fish have been models in drawings since the rupestrian paintings (in Australia, Altamira, Lascaux, Baja California) up to contemporary works like the images by Paul Klee, Marc Chagall, Rufino Tamayo and Francisco Toledo. Also, the lizards, opossums, elephants, and other animal entities of overflowing fantasy.

This zoomorphism is characteristic of this painter in spite of his youth within the national panorama, yet with an incident personality that is included in a conjuntive composition which is not mathematical or logically lineal, this animalistic characters are arranged as in old codex’s, modern comic strips; popular lucky strike of this author; it pleasantly subjugates because of its unconscious, joyful, fresh proposal.

These cupboards of singular and colorful language offer a multiple reading granted by the attitude and suggested images through the elements used, intuited by means of aesthetic intentions.

A guitar, a bicycle, a god, a nude character, a fish, a man with a hat, suggest sounds, rhythms, movements, agression, sensuality, biblical breaths, enigmas, symbols and other mental extrapolations, let the spectator´s imagination fly to tell, once again, these fables, stories, anecdotes, myths and philosophical thoughts that emerge from his innate concern, fortunate or ungrateful, according to the psychic state of the existential moment.

Here, the aesthetic communication is accomplished, the one established between the creator and the recipient of the plastic messages.

The excellence of the pictorial accomplishment by Gustavo Machado is accurately appreciated in works where he represents a single character or accompanied by another being, who observe each other as through a colorful magic mirror between them, yet these characters are immersed in a different act of contemplation or introspection.

Macario Matus
Art Critique

It's not over ...

I say I express my ideas painting, I don’t even know it myself; I know I paint for the pleasure of it. It goes together with enjoying shapes and colors, textures and materials which take me by hand into discovering new paths that amaze me day after day.

It’s not over when I finish a painting; it is then when ”the adventure” starts. With the first line, the first stroke of splash, a new door opens, and I never know where it’s taking me, but I step in, not without being concerned of what I might find. That, I actually enjoy, is like the adrenaline produced by extreme sports…

Facing the white, clean surface, awakens in me memories; gives me ideas and poses the never-ending question: What am I going to do here? I sketch out the first line, straight or curve, and so it begins, the structure of what the final product will be: Dreams begin to flow; memories, characters, faces, animals, and every day things; they just jump out without meaning to: they just appear. I unleash my imagination and so I witness the result some of the times satisfactory, some, not so much.

I resort a lot of characters; most of them bring back my memories of faces that have meant something for me; people I just saw in the street sometime in the past suddenly show up in my painting.

I don’t like stereotypes or formulas; I’m interested in discovering new things, to invent, to create, to research. I visit museums and galleries to get a feedback, to see new tendencies and current new artistic approaches, the day to day swing of things, so I can take what I’m attracted to, or seduced by. I try them out to see what happens and usually, it takes me over to yet new things.

That’s what I believe my painting is; changing, honest, committed with myself; that evolves as time requires.

I’m often asked: Why did you paint this painting? What inspired you? I’m almost always in troubles, and I have to resort to memory, which sometimes betrays me, but I believe the interpretation of a piece, has to be made by each individual; it will mean different things to different people, and quite often, different to what I conceived.

To make people think, when they see my work, is one of the objectives; to take them in, to get them involved. That nourishes me since, what I once thought about, changes with every new viewer’s point of view…

My goal in Art is: to make people feel; to send them back in time, to other worlds; to put their imagination to work, to stir their insides; to make them question themselves, for Art sensitivity; new worlds we must enter, open minds and enjoy new experiences that shall take us to a better understanding of the world that is around us.

Gustavo Machado
Artist

“Beauty only belongs to him who understands it, not to he who has it. Beauty is nothing more than the truth within each one of us.”

Carlos Fuentes
Writer

Gustavo Machado: Colorful and personal lyricism

Moments... in art

I met the Mexican artist Gustavo Machado before I had the opportunity to expand my artistic landscape and recognize more of his very vast work nourished with its wonderful roosters… just to now discover that it includes fabulous and historic characters, bulls, a thousand objects which means that his fantasy goes beyond unsuspected trails and surprises us and pleases us with its clever discoveries.

Because Machado finds in his metaphoric game a pleasing amusement. He has made out of his painting a philosophy for the poetic life which is valid to every element of the world. And, in spite of his diversity, there exists a unity which is identified with his name. The universe purified by the artist liberates all kinds of beings and items. Signs that are adapted to his idiosyncrasy or character, which makes us think and lucubrate unsuspected beings and spaces.

Down to a few words, his soul demands to be populated by the expansions of his own imagination and even echoes in itself, and concentrates and gets lost in his thoughts, using the rigorous exhaustion methods and waits to see what arises from the inspiration MOMENTS.

After submitting to the appropriate apprenticeship, back in the seventies he starts the journey through the prodigious plastic abundance and next to him wonder around the memory and the irony, a thousand feelings and emotions. He can start it from simple things – like a tea pot, for example- and compose his metaphors.

Or he enters by the force the objects per se, not their representation, producing this way a second grade metaphor bringing together two terms that belong one to the art and the other, to reality.

However, all of his work blooms with an exuberant richness of colour which helps to extract the magic, the humour and the gesture. It is always possible to glimpse its refinement. The essence, the whim… or the solemnity. In this way the propositions accumulate as we are overwhelmed with the images as admirable for us as the normal reproductions of beauty. The traditional codes seen from a different perspective are substituted by diverse possibilities, all with the same validity.

We know by other comments that the presence and work of his father, also an artist, brought him closer to this occupation for which his first apprenticeship came to him with the example, a profitable first lesson and a true stimulant.

In my opinion, the importance of the essential role of his father lays in having helped him from the beginning to be aware of how much talent he already had himself. Because if the artist would not have been born an artist, the example of his father could have annulated and stiffen him as much as it could have stimulate him.

In regards to the technique, a religious and with undefined boundaries word, Machado seems to have acquired it very early in his life.

The funny thing within the simplicity that can be observed in his work, is that you can note waiting compasses – especially when the topic changes- but at the same time, the childhood joy, the almost gratitude of the line, the pleasure of the perpetual creation.

The measurement of Machado's talent is taken properly speaking, from the first MOMENT. The discovery of himself, his gifts, his creative faculty, runs along with that first order vital element, which is the discovery of colour. He entices yet does not surfeit us: he has the intimate, deep knowledge of the sources he uses and recreates his ideas, his inspiration in the previously mentioned game, which works as an expression and above all of amusement.

I suppose - because I have not personally met him - that he primarily paints for himself until he is satisfied and then exposes himself so that others can make a judgement. Through time, his pencil and brushes were affirming the grace, good taste and delight that means to him to be a restless creator… and a disturbing one too.

In spite of it all you can guess in Gustavo Machado a constant search, the temptation to experiment which helplessly takes him to improve, to new emotions, to unexpected reactions, to an impregnated action – indeed- of colour, of multiple tones. The artist will continue to pursuit the encounter of the vision that liberates topics and habits, the manual virtuosity, obstinate somehow with a philosophic and aesthetic objective. His emotions will continue to take shape as they have so far and most likely, it will be expound to give personal and unequivocally Machado shape.

“My goal is” stated the artist, “to make people feel and to transport them to other times, to other worlds, to get their imagination started, to touch something within them, have them to question themselves because the art is sensitivity, new worlds to enter to, open their minds and enjoy new experiences which will take you to better comprehend the world around us”.

In the meantime, my dear friend, we are facing an artist of great importance, who has already been awarded with national and international prizes which accredit him as one of the still young artists of the plastic firmament in our country.

Sergio A. Búrquez R.

Other testimonies

A cupboard of characters - Macario Matus

Years Ago - Fernando Arechavala Lascurain

It's not over - Gustavo Machado

Colorful Lyricism - Sergio A. Búrquez R.

Smiles allowed - María Gabriela Dumay