Influence of Silence
Published on the occasion of the exhibition from March 7 to April 23, 1995, at the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña

Skin Tattoo

Raimundo Figueroa’s Paintings portray color fields and chromed spaces similar to washed zone; smeared and swept with color and luminosity. In them are found the signs that tell about symbols which are actual or obsolete to the eye that surveys those pictoric lands. Through this ride, letters, words, numbers and scribbles are recognized, which were drawn, scraped, scratched and sometimes erased on the pictorial surface. They are like automatic notes from passing or everlasting thoughts of superficial and profound subjects.

In them, the paint is a chromatic layer. The application process of the material body varies, showing differences of temperamental handlings. They are metaphors and tracks from these creative processes. Schedules of the hand’s contact over the surface, and traces from the mind and the instrument are registered on the daily discourses. The conceptual reflection goes hand in hand – and sometimes against the grain – with the formal process. Thus, the titles serve as a clue to identify ideas and themes that are related to the form which floats or anchors itself on the vast field of color and light. They float and pour the chromatic saturated stains, the cubes, houses, fishes, phalluses, rings, buttonholes, kisses, vulvas, and shadows which are emblems with no narrative intention. In the most recent series the supports already transform into high intensity light fields. White, amber light which insists on blurring details. They remind me of old skin fragments, aged leather tanned by the sun and the salt; the lines are scars from wounds by cruel child games. They are like walls stained by the common hand; marked by the beating from palm and tree branches. They remain burnished by the sand that blows with the east winds.

Humberto Figueroa
February 3, 1995
División de Artes Plásticas Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña