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When the multitudes first appear, Waissman will choose clear colours, with a great predominance of white, and over it, the colour added is constructing spaces, sometimes by means of transparencies, and others by contrasts. The multitudes are shaped by small repetitive strokes, generating a counterpoint with the surrounding landscape generally achieved by means of wide horizontal, or vertical strokes. Landscapes, even when frequently hard to identify, are evident: there are horizon lines, skies, land, or sea, or great deserted areas. Over the vastness of the desert, human conglomerates arise. Their presence, even when sometimes imperceptible, modifies space in a special and definitive way.
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El Pozo Sagrado, series the Multitudes, 2005
If the artist has ever depicted the dark angles of contemporary reality, his paintings situate us before a persistent and tenacious will of change. Perhaps this is why it seems a little excessive to think that crowds move amid a desolate surrounding, in any case, we could say that they inhabit an area where gaining ground is quite a difficult task.
On the other hand, the displacements, the migrations, and nomadisms are the protagonist characters of heroic epics (let’s think about the exodus from our Jujuy province), of the birth and growth of peoples and nations like ours, of the search of the Promised Land. None of these situations have taken place without pains and difficulties, without determinations and struggles.
All these topics are referred to a constant concern: the thought on the immediate surrounding, Argentina and its people, the country’s projects, and the arduous daily life, present, but also future times, real signs and possible prospects.
ALONSO, RODRIGO; Waissman, Buenos Aires, 2006
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The scenery of the multitudes is always different, but at some point, always the same. It is the territory of the silent popular expression, of nomadism, of exodus, and of permanent search. Inside these margins, the places vary: football stadiums, ships, deserts. To the crowds, these are always temporary, transient places, “non-places”, as described by Marc Auge.
The uncertainty of these crowds has frequently been pointed out: their errant, aimless wanderings, their surfacing as a sign of the dissolution of individuals together with their capacity for action. The surrounding desert has also been understood as a world of devastation, barren and hostile, as the scenery of an awful fate, or an immobilizing pulsation. Even when these remarks may be suitable, and can be validated by some of the artist’s texts, some other readings, no less relevant can also be inferred. On one hand, the crowds are always moving. If they represent the world, then the world according to Waissman is not static but dynamic entity, a permanently changing territory. And that change is promoted by the will of the multitude. It is not the result of a contingency or chance.
Aguada, series the Multitudes, 2003
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