The poetics of origin. [Some reflections on the sculpture by Martín Chirino].
In an era that delights in the filthy, narcotized with a pathetic reality treated as if it were a show, few artists resist the widespread call of banal stylistics. Between the pseudo-sociological thematisation of “biennialism” and pure ornamentation, what I would call neutralised aesthetics are developed in which infantile regression is fulfilled succinctly. Or to be more precise, in the dross itself, the scatological, that which is treated in museums as if it were an adequate relic for a society that is unaware of the terrible fascination of the sacred. In such an acritical situation, to trace a line of resistance is not exactly easy. However, neither does it make sense to deliver oneself to the labour of the paid mourners or convert the theory of the implosive pretence on the axis of a theoretical and plastic behaviour which would have to, and I dare to use this mandatory tone, attempt to propose intense examples which help us to escape the worst. The work of Martín Chirino, an artist with an extremely coherent career is, in my opinion, proof that it is possible to construct a personal territory conversing with tradition without falling into the realms of traditionalism or the “academic”. This master of fire, to use a crucial term of the Smiths and Alchemists essay by Mircea Eliade , has forged sculptures which are, without a doubt, decisive milestones in contemporary Spanish art, allegories of origin, symbols of flight and even a homage to the efforts of the avant-garde who give us the gift of a contemplative time which is the result of a radical meditation. Chirino, a passionate artist , has maintained an impressive loyalty to the iron as a material that allows him to achieve fluid expression. This magnificent heir of the artistic Iron Age founded by Julio González has followed a spiral path , developing series that allow him to investigate the origin. By dominating the iron, he imposes his own will that ends up transforming, for example, into Poetic and useless tools. Chirino highlighted in “The ploughshare and the plough”, a text published in Papeles de Son Armadans, that the inspiration is related to fundamental and humble tools: “My sculpture is closer to the tools in their beginnings. It is in harmony with the plough or the ploughshare. My work could have the human extension that those instruments have. They unite man to the earth in a harmonious and necessary task. It too –the sculpture- interlinks with the human spirit in its most radical dimension, that of farm equipment... They are in accordance with the useful being raised to the status of a symbol. I found them in the village”. There is something paradoxical in this approximation between the tool, the instrument that allows us to dominate the world, and poetry, that manner of speaking that knows that the earth is an inexhaustible tank of meaning. Heidegger pointed out that a work of art is an absolute origin, something very different from the useful and the casually organised. The setting into work of truth to which the German philosopher refers, supposes that art is an opening of worlds or, to be more precise, it is in the breach between the available and that which is non-oblivion (memorable and subject to the evocative power of poetry). The “tools” of Chirino float or are supported lightly on the floor, they are not there to be touched or to carry out a specific task, on the contrary, they teach us that poetry is without a reason why. Chirino, master of the curvature , rigorously follows his aesthetic creed of “less is more”, using the minimum of material to obtain greater expressivity, but above all seeking the poetic and suggestive through physical effort, hammering on the forge, dominating the power of the fire, making the blacksmith’s tools “work” for the benefit of more intense artistic aims. The evocation of the wind, the vision of roots stripped from the earth, shapes that establish poetics of the wind like the aerovores or the masks, a metal world but with a subtlety that is difficult to describe, emerge from the imagination of this extraordinary sculptor, Martín Chirino. Among the pertinent references to contextualise him it is inevitable to mention, as I have already done, Julio González, as well as the admiration for Ángel Ferrant or the importance of the ascending movements and the contact with the floor in Brancusi. The thought spectrum of this artist is based on the need to establish a revision of the modern from an emotional relationship with aboriginal art and, particularly, with the ancestral Canary Islands culture. The works that have emerged from the forge go beyond the clumsy dichotomy between the figurative and the abstract to sink, rather, in the symbolic dimension, as much as in the power of the totemic. “Before Chirino appeared –says Serge Faucherau-, it hadn’t occurred to anyone to sculpt the wind” Ángel Ferrant said that “Martín Chirino transmitted his personal naturalness to the iron, in which nothing is fake. The simplicity and austere serenity is his and of his irons: the effusive expansion in which they are distinguished”. The gesture is a “drawing in the air”, an expression of strength and sensuality, where space continuity draws one’s gaze that much further than strict objectuality. Let us remember some, now classic, works of this masterly sculptor such as El carro (1957), belonging to what he called “poetic and useless tools” in which he established a sculptured meditation on the ways of relating ourselves to the earth and achieving an imaginary fertility or the essential Composition. Homage to El Lissitsky which led Maderuelo to establish the analogy between abstract expressionism and his action painting which he qualified as “action sculpture”. It is not, however, merely an emotion of the gesture of striking what is made visible, but the “tactile” pleasure of the folds, the intensity of the material which has undergone a search for harmony. We ought to remember Chirino’s link with El Paso, the great moment of Spanish informalism , although his extraordinary capacity to draw in space does not lead him to a nihilistic shade but rather draws a spiral path that transmits an enigmatic hope to us. Cirlot reconstructs the symbol of the spiral to conclude that, in it, the attempt to conciliate the wheel of transformations with the mystic centre and the immobile motor emerges or, at least, constitutes an invitation to this penetration towards the interior of the universe, that is to say, in pursuit of his intimacy. In Chirino’s case, the spiral symbolises the wind, but also the creative breath and gust, an incarnation of the power of chaos and of its resolution in moments of suspension filled with beauty. In terms of material imagination, these sculptures break with dichotomies given that if they are aerial figures they also refer to the vertiginous experience of immersing in water or the serenity that overcomes us when contemplating a landscape. Earth, face, mask, dreams and the closure of the radical experience of modernity, a true spatial projection, as Eduardo Westerdahl said, maintains the Chirino work tense. These memorable works, folded in a baroque fashion, invite the spectator to enter into poetics of intensity, where the lines and the rigidity of metal have given way to the most beautiful spatial modulation. Chirino finds the trace of origin in the spiral , in tune with Bachelard’s observation, in the poetics of space, in that when man enters himself aiming towards the centre of the spiral, he often begins to wander and it appears that he is entering an anomalous “outer prison”. Chirino, without falling into literalism or interpretosis, unites the mythological motive of the labyrinth (that astute structure that alludes to loss and melancholy loneliness) with the mask (the dramatic element that allows us to escape from the evil eye, a rigid sign that speaks of a mortal absence). This Canary Islands creator allegorises our era that is, undoubtedly, subject to innumerable crises, in the etymological sense: paths that fork and force us to make decisions. The masks and helmets allude to the resistance of the modern, to a reproduction that does not ignore the controversial. The folded constructions of Chirino, with such a reductionist colour scheme as it is baroque, reveal a deep symbolic dimension . The aerovore which, as the artist himself indicates, is “a flying man in search of his prey, an encounter with his own identity” enters into dialogue, at a respectable distance, with My fatherland is a rock, that metal shell or dome that is, once again, a spiral that generates an impracticable empty space. The defiance of gravity, the desire to raise oneself above the limits, is also trusting in that which appears in one’s dreams, without anyone knowing why. Chirino knows that the work is, above all else, a dream, a withdrawal to a domain which goes beyond the conventional dimensions of time and space, where the origin and the end are in harmony. A spiral opens with a fascinating elegance, a delicate stroke, almost like a signature, paying tribute to Marinetti, singer of speed, in Sunset, the display of the primordial shape generates new spatial configurations. Even when it appears that the material is about to crack, Chirino’s work establishes a prodigious continuity. He continues to meditate on the spiral that, from the Palaeolithic, it has a cosmic dimension . Towards the end of the 19th century, Santiago Rusiñol already spoke about overcoming aesthetic rules that emerge from the forges: an art without absurd limits, “as free as the wind, which is born and forged in the fire”. The work of Chirino is certainly a song of freedom . This artist, who is aware of the importance of genius loci , which paid homage to Africa, and has never lost sight of the immense horizon of the Canary Islands, has planned a piece of work that overcomes any isolation. A master of iron, that material with magical-religious connotations, he has forged allegories for an era that, on many occasions, is completely lost. I insist on seeing his spirals as examples of hope. “What other spiral –writes Bachelard in The poetics of space- than the being of man. In that spiral, so many dynamisms are reversed. Suddenly, we don’t know whether we are running towards the centre or away from it”. The beauty that a promise of eternity is , is condensed in the material poetics of Chirino: the artist who, faithful to his origins, presented us with journeys towards the essential.
