Mess is More (2013)

The impetus that the journey and the experience of distance from Paraguay have given the artist has provided lines of inquiry that we will develop here as a trilogy, lines of work that were pursued in recent years between Paris and Barcelona. This text does not present each of Sebastián Boesmi's creative movements, understood as styles or thematic horizons, but rather aims to identify the dominant elements of his recent work.

His work is also linked to his earlier work in Asunción, although it is noticeable that his latest creation is more expansive and gesturally free, more automatic, and generates new images and concepts. There are also coincidences in the blending of earlier and new periods, but the main novelty to observe during this time is the introduction of greater informality, a radical and energetic style, and the composition of more organic fields of color.

The reasons behind the work of recent years must be argued here and now. The exchange of parts of Boesmi's iconic system alternates and testifies to three expressive moments. The artist arranges, like a spider's web, a universe that is surreal, scatological, and humorous, rooted in popular imagery, with its own aesthetic and a high capacity for communication. From this same exhibition framework, the aim is to make visible the gestures and emotions that led Sebastián Boesmi to develop the aesthetic capital he possesses at this time.

1. Concentration

The iconography that defines Boesmi's traditional or early imagery is shown here in detail: the drawings are done with pen, marker, or ballpoint pen; in continuous lines, without interruption or emphasis. These illustrations are characterized by the formalization of figures such as people, birds, airplanes, dogs, cows, or mosquitoes, among other recognizable forms. The agglomeration and completeness of the compositions, as characteristic modes, provoke a bizarre reaction, revealing a sensibility that values ​​the unusual, the anomalous, or the exceptional.

The scenes range from a celebratory and baroque spirit to a more spectral and schematic one. The human element is never in doubt, as there are crowds or solitary figures whose origins reflect the artist's humanist reflections in his creative act.

The schematization and linear density suggest an idea of ​​alienation, of a distant detachment from the world. Boesmi seems drawn to the possibility of constructing a fantastical alternative, founding a parallel place through elaboration and repetition.

The theme of urban sites, of the street, would be consistent with executing, with accounting for the place inhabited by the crowd or the individual, from backgrounds scribbled with delirious writings, or in scenes where graffiti fits. The dark or bright colors and linear patterns function as a screen that Boesmi plucks from a magma of freshly popular meanings: they could allude to gatherings in public space, perhaps marches or demonstrations, or the crowd on a Saturday night in a bar.

2. Essential line

Perhaps it is a monochrome piece that offers the most dramatic shift in Boesmi's highly expressive and chromatic work. The scale is larger, and indeed, there is a palpable obsession with neatness and precision in achieving an essential execution. Almost in a minimalist turn, yet still baroque, the artist began this series stripped of color and formal references, embracing abstraction and his taste for the amorphous, during his extended stay in Berlin in the winter of 2013.

Executed in black ink, this large landscape formally alludes to ornaments, gardens, roots, and foliage that evoke intense mental wanderings. Observing this variegated gestural quality, one might understand that the artist has chosen to relinquish his individual and personal style, but in return, he achieves a visual discovery that brings forth detailed or total illusions from the canvas.

The result is a jumble of sinuous and elegant linearity, at other times dense with swarms and intersections, with adjacent and synthesizing areas. The density of the stripes and their directional interplay produce a kind of paradox: the composition is abundant yet frozen.

Presented as a large-format polyptych, the monochrome is sharp and bold, with a certain digression into scatological forms, fluids, and hairs. Provoking a gaze focused on detail, this expanded map, this cartography of immensity, also projects a total vision, like an archipelago or a jigsaw puzzle. But it also pushes the limits of our vision, doubling the illusion: the anamorphic effect of the whole, seen from a distance, resembles a macro-landscape, making us see it as if it were the peaks of a snowy or misty mountain.