Armando Guerrero

What the Wind Leaves Behind

Wind exists only in what it moves. Armando Guerrero has turned that paradox into a method. In his paintings the air is never seen; what we see is the broken branch, the leaf that never quite lands, the boat waiting on dry ground. His series «Viento» (Wind) grew out of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s poem «Primero sueño» and Giorgio de Chirico’s metaphysical writings, and it keeps the conviction both share: time strips things bare.

The technique carries the idea. Guerrero lays down coats of encaustic —pigment in hot wax— and oil, then scores them with a point until the buried colour shows through. The line of his trees is an incision. In Luz de luna it rises thin across a night blue and branches out like the veins of a hand; in Al calor del tiempo it glows on an ember red. The result has the precision of printmaking, which comes from his years in the graphic arts, and the warmth of painting. That is his strongest achievement: an exact craft in the service of a landscape coming apart.

The trees stand alone. They have no leaves. Sometimes they have no ground. In La garza an old boat of uneven planks rests on land beneath the trees, a heron standing on it. There is no water. The boat is waiting for something no one names.

In Memorias and other long, narrow pieces, printed pages —maps, scores, old sheets of paper— appear beside the trees, always upright, parallel to the edge. They are the only order the wind does not touch. In El regreso, La garza and Hojas y recuerdos the support is a panel of wooden planks, 120 by 266 centimetres, with the joints left visible, so the landscape is seen as if through half-open shutters.

The collection also holds four acrylic portraits of Frida Kahlo, 50 by 50 centimetres, rendered in two tones. They show the other side of his work and recall that Guerrero also comes from performance and the street, from his years with Arañas de Peluche, and that popular imagery is not foreign to him.

In Untitled (Bodegón) paint runs down the canvas in green, ochre and white veils over bare trees, a bottle and two pieces of fruit. The field is above; the table below. Between them falls a rain of colour that erases and reveals. This is how a room looks once the wind has passed.