GROVE, THE INNER TREES
ARBOLEDA, LOS ARBOLES INTERNOS.
ORLANDO AGUDELO BOTERO: (OF) THE SPIRIT AND SUBJECT OF THE PAINTING
When a painter decides or determines, in a rational sense, to dedicate his life toward the layering and very substance of the paint itself, it is resolutely realized from said decision and determination; this doesn’t occur for Orlando Agudelo Botero, who has always been possessed by the extreme need to paint, making painting his life and what he does, as we observe, by way of what I’ve called him and his work of intuitional restlessness and, thus, that restlessness, which provides that character and content to his painting of a revelation.
It’s the dramatic relation between what is meant for life and what is meant for the painting which is constantly being solved [or not] in Orlando Agudelo Botero’s painting, and it is there where a superior and powerful tension in which it is necessary to involve and apply the forces of rationality and those of intuition, which he creates and realizes by a medium of transcendental consciousness that he possesses and has constructed unto himself concerning the irrevocable destiny he has for himself and the painting.
It is a tormenting clarity and an unspeakable truth, but it’s also these same elements [of torment and unspeakableness] which make it more brilliant in its essence and whose transcendental truth is transmitted through his paintings.
There are tensions and trances within the drama that come with being a painter and having the painting act as a form of communication with the outside world. It’s as if an aspiration toward his destiny and that of humanity were untouched and indestructibly held him in it and, from there, his painting also performed the task for the construction of that new humanity he seeks and for which he paints.
Every artist, as E.H. Gombrich affirmed, makes his own personal history of art and it is he, who knows how to find and thus construct a style which characterizes and differentiates him from other painters. That is, that having illustrious and exciting relations in the sentient observation and critique of art history, being able to take the transformation of the same, and, from there, extract style and for the same reason then, we would be exposed to a new style. This new style becomes evident when the painter settles himself (or doesn’t), he relates (or doesn’t) with other artistic styles. He knows how to trigger and suppress these qualities. He develops concoctions and new combinations—extraordinary and unknown.
The new style, as Orlando Agudelo Botero also deals with, in his life and his painting, what we call, in them, the relentless style, which as mentioned, is immersed and internalized in his destiny as a painter. The painter provides a measure of his destiny as a painter and it begets a new destiny and adds meaning to his painting.
He has and will continue to go on that quest, certainly in this painting, which from its intricate symbolism and exciting asceticism, in color and line, in its form and content, in his spirit and matter, is realized in its possible and impossible movements, both visible and invisible, as their living work (so called by Rilke for Rodin’s works). And this living work, we say because of Orlando Agudelo Botero’s painting, lives in it and makes us live; because he presents it to us, he proposes it, and encourages us as a result of the indelible and beautiful consciousness, which brightens, making his painting a revelation in areas we did not know or had not discovered, so it intensifies and becomes more powerful in the soft spot of each person.
And every painting is the result of a contemplation of humanity and its destiny, of the hope and bleakness of man, and how to dominate or transform these ideas in the serenity-inspired knowledge of oneself by way of his painting.
For that same purpose, the subject of this exposition, is innately related with that of Nature (physis) and within this Nature that is also ours, Orlando Agudelo Botero, has felt from his surprising life, full of astonishment both physical and metaphysical. The necessity to mediate with this nature, by way of the Great Tree of Humanity (of the Wanderers, of the Inner Trees, of the Genealogical Tree, of the Rebirth Tree, of Creativity) are within himself and us. From his life experience and through the painting, he reveals to himself and to us, the truth of the knowledge of life and painting as life, in an exclamatory way.
Óscar Jairo González Hernández
Art History Professor
Department of Communication—Communication and Audiovisual Language, University of MedellÃn
June 2015
Translated from Spanish to English by Roberto Rosas