Enrique Machado
Archetypes on the dream of elements
"To disappear into deep water or to disappear toward a far horizon, to become part of depth of infinity, such is the destiny of man that finds its image in the destiny of water."
Gaston Bachelard. Water and Dreams. 1942.
Art is a creative experience that merges the alchemy of science and the metaphoric journey of art. One of the Jungian archetypes in mythology is the artist-scientist, a unique process of abstraction of the human mind. Within that experimental approach is the work of Enrique Machado, an emerging contemporary artist that has placed his work imaginary in the coordinates of Miami. A global city with an archipelago of nationalities and cultures that become a unique urban setting for the evident and unavoidable intensity of global relations and cultural exchanges of a broad geographical scale.
Silicone a synthetic compound, inert, with polymers together with carbon, hydrogen, oxygen constitutes an ever-present component in everyday life with no marked harmful effects on organisms in the environment. That is the experimental expressive territory of Enrique, alchemy with one of science, modern universal materials (silicone) with the visual narrative of contemporary art (painting).
Enrique, a sculpture-artist that emerged from the prestigious New World School of the Arts in Miami, FL. and who crossed the border of painting, is, however a creative mind which is constantly thinking on the possibilities of the three-dimensional. His paintings marked by the trace, texture and feel of the silicone, each of his paintings seem to follow a plan, every artistic action concerning his silicone paintings seem to descend from his universe of concepts and define territories within the frame.
These territories created by his silicone traces, forms and color patterns possess their own history and vitality, their personal magnetism, in reaction, placing the viewer beyond the bounds of functional logic. Enrique’s paintings do not hold autonomy of any kind, the space he has conquered takes the shape of a proposal of expressive methods. The pattern of the spiral and the labyrinth [ancestral symbols of mythological and religious significance] in many of his paintings bring the no temporal value of unexpected symbols. As in the case of the painting “Tunnel Wave #2."
His art is a dialectic confrontation in the world of virtual assumptions and the physical appeal of things. As the artist expresses; “I try to communicate the language of chaos and balanced simplicity explored through the movement found in the ocean, waves, and water. I form textures that exude clashing forces. A metaphor for constant change and battle. Topics of persistence, power, overwhelming, drowning, and destruction exaggerate with controlled clumps and goop of overlaid piles of dripping silicone patterns."
Enrique’s use of silicone places traces and patterns central to his art, becoming essential in his artwork when one loses the measure of the dimension, but still the artist revises the principle of composition as order and intertwine, which he accomplishes on extensive ample surfaces or in environmental urban murals.
Other artists have approached the silicone qualities as a base for their work. Such as, London-based sculptor Ron Mueck or Sam Jinks an Australian visual artist, both from a hyper-realist conceptual approach. Cosmo Wenman in the stream of reproducing fragments of art history combined with his contemporary proposals; and Daniel Widrig, a London based artist, moving in similar directions of Enrique. Where sculpture, topographic expressions, design and architecture seem to be related exploration fields.
His departure from a particular material as a tool for expression is not an easy task, it’s a risky decision, but is also an identity matter. The artist’s decision to work the silicone can be a rewarding experimental, challenging experience, but it can also become a dead end expression tool. However, the experimental character of the artist is rooted in his approach to life, his living context and his conceptual framework, as he states; “My work is about the organization and control of the materials. My goal is to further explore the esthetic characteristics of these materials and to communicate a new concept of textured art expressing movement and rich visual patterns within the study of water and its rhythm."
To write about art is always a complex risk. Where questions of cultural identity, artistic trends, migration, transnational influences, the local/global concern and our growing consciousness of a networked social environment are just a few issues of the environment in which contemporary art maps, how and why our cultural values are formed and transformed. Writing about an emerging artist is much more complicated since the extended body of work with its strength and integrity is to be established, but is still part of an ongoing process, a journey into the future where its long-term ramifications are to develop.
In the case of Enrique Machado, his art is part of an ongoing experiment process. His studio a creative lab, where the exploration of materials, textures, color and search for a balanced expression are vital to his life context in which water, light, human communication and organic flow within the segments of the art that he creates. His Red Crash series of paintings is an example.
Talent, education of talent and capacity to communicate, is a way to define the character of a real artist. Machado has gone through the path of educating his artistic talent through a comprehensive training. It started at South Miami Middle School (Magnet Art School), the prestigious Design and Architecture High School, a graduate from the renowned New World School of the Arts in 2004; he then was awarded a scholarship to the Kansas City Art Institute. His understanding of communicating through art implies that artists produce knowledge prompted by the constant change in the context of cross-cultural interactions. His perception of art history as a key referential tool permits him to study Van Gogh and Jeff Koons in a symmetrical relation of experiences of intense communicative nuance and complexity. He tries to learn from history in parallel to the world he lives in, half local, half global...
His studio, the experiments and research, he works with, departing from silicone as an essential material are his vital artistic actions. Talking with this young artist about his aspirations and visions of his work he expresses that his work with the surface and the silicone does somehow not want to do what all other painters have done before him. Similar to a great modern artist like Jackson Pollock, Machado seems to search the path of an unorthodox approach to painting unconventional pictures. That is his challenge.
In the apocalyptic vision of XXI century, frantic environmentalists alert us that the city of Miami will be underwater in a few years, swallowed by the Atlantic Ocean. More discreet environmental science researchers explain that changes are occurring and that like any other oceanfront port city; Miami might be affected by alterations by the masses of water. In a decade marked by an overflow of over-simplistic information, a world of digital performance and spectacle, Enrique’s metaphor on Miami, on water, on movement, abstraction and imagination make its balanced presence through his artwork, with his Wave Series, the Crash Series and his Running Water Series. After all Enrique Machado is Miami, is water, is the environment and urban diversity, is about looking for a center in things. Enrique is about the exercise of viewing and discovering the possibility of looking again with no rush, calmly in peace, bringing out all the necessary questions that his visual metaphors bring to our eyes. His energetic but subtle paintings call for reflection bending it towards its force.
In this context, I am referring to the simple fact that in the last decade’s art and visual culture seem to have undeniably abandoned the concepts of harmony and balance that for centuries have privileged art aesthetic experience. Machado seems to have understood this before anything else, and he seems to warn us that far more simply art is a way to dialogue with that which exists. As a young artist that is his challenge. Like mute poems, the Miami artist evocative water waves, movements and turns resonate with suggestiveness without explicitly revealing their meanings.
Jorge Luis Gutierrez
Museologist/Curator.
July 2014. ©
Enrique Machado
Arquetipos en el sueño de los elementos
“El agua es la señora del lenguaje fluido, del lenguaje sin choques, del lenguaje continuo, continuado, del lenguaje que aligera el ritmo, que da una materia uniforme a ritmos diferentes”.
Gaston Bachelard, El agua y los sueños,1942.
El arte es una experiencia creativa que fusiona la alquimia de la ciencia y la travesía metafórica del arte. Uno de los arquetipos de Jung en la mitología es el artista-científico, un proceso único de exploración a partir de la mente humana. Dentro de este enfoque experimental se ubica la obra de Enrique Machado, un artista contemporáneo emergente, que coloca su obra imaginaria entre las coordenadas de Miami. Una ciudad global constituida por un archipiélago de nacionalidades y culturas que la convierten en un entorno urbano único que evidencia con intensidad y de manera inevitable las relaciones globales propias de una ciudad transnacional y sus intercambios culturales con sus realidades locales de una amplia gama geográfica.
La silicona es un compuesto sintético, inerte, con polímeros, que junto con el carbono, el hidrógeno y el oxígeno constituye un componente siempre presente en la vida cotidiana, sin efectos nocivos en los organismos o en el medio ambiente. Allí se ubica el territorio experimental expresivo de Enrique, la alquimia (ciencia), los materiales universales actuales (silicona) y la narrativa visual del arte contemporáneo (pintura)
Enrique, es originariamente escultor, egresado de la prestigiosa New World of the Arts (Escuela de Arte del Nuevo Mundo) en Miami, FL, quien decide cruzar el complejo umbral de la pintura. Una mente creativa que está constantemente pensando en las posibilidades de las tres dimensiones. Sus pinturas marcadas por la huella, la textura y el tacto de la silicona, en cada obra pareciera seguir un plan, donde toda su acción artística con sus tubos de silicona y la dilución de tintes, sugiere un descenso desde su universo de conceptos, su entorno y su existencia cotidiana para así trazar territorios definidos por fluidos, revueltos e intensos dentro del espacio de cada pintura.
Estos territorios creados por sus rastros de silicona, sus formas y patrones de color, poseen su propia historia y vitalidad, su magnetismo personal, capaz de poner al espectador más allá de los límites de la lógica funcional. Las pinturas de Enrique no responden a cualquier tipo de autonomía predecible y anunciada. El espacio conquistado en cada pintura toma la forma de una propuesta de métodos expresivos, invasivos y de sensaciones en movimiento, de fluidos continuos y encontrados. Cada una de sus obras posee un recorrido y trayectoria irrepetible aun en su similitud y en un singular balance entre la serenidad y la turbulencia. Contradicción propia del viento, el agua y los sentimientos humanos. El patrón de la espiral y el laberinto [símbolos ancestrales de significado mitológico y religioso] presente en muchas de sus pinturas permiten llevar el valor temporal de los símbolos en su narrativa visual. Tal es el caso de la pintura "Tunnel Wave # 2."
Su obra es una confrontación dialéctica en el mundo de los supuestos virtuales y el atractivo físico de las cosas. Y en este sentido el artista expresa; "Trato de comunicar el lenguaje del caos y la simplicidad
equilibrada explorando a través del movimiento presente en el océano, las olas y el agua. Yo formo texturas que exudan las fuerzas enfrentadas. Una metáfora para el cambio constante y sus batallas. Los temas de la persistencia, el poder, lo abrumador, el ahogamiento, y la destrucción se exageran con los grumos controlados y las pilas superpuestas sobre los patrones de goteo de la silicona”
Enrique convierte la silicona en la huella y patrón central de su obra, el elemento esencial a través del cual logra que el espectador pierda la medida de la dimensión y la escala. Siempre en una constante formulación meticulosa revisa el principio de composición y orden que entrelazan forma, textura y color, en superficies extensas, o en murales urbanos ambientales que desbordan la sensación liquida y de movimiento que imprime a sus obras.
Otros artistas se han acercado a las cualidades de la silicona como base para su trabajo. Tales como el escultor londinense Ron Mueck o Sam Jinks un artista visual de Australia, ambos desde un enfoque conceptual hiperrealista. Cosmo Wenman por otra parte se ubica en la corriente de reproducir fragmentos de la historia del arte combinado con sus propuestas contemporáneas; y Daniel Widrig, un artista cuyo estudio se ubica en la ciudad de Londres, se aproxima en direcciones similares a las de Enrique, donde la escultura, las expresiones cuasi-cartográficas, el diseño, la arquitectura y el ambiente parecen ser campos de exploración relacionados.
Su punto de partida desde un material en particular como herramienta expresiva no es tarea fácil, es una decisión arriesgada, pero también representa una cuestión de identidad. La decisión del artista de trabajar la silicona si bien representa una aproximación experimental, es sin lugar a dudas una experiencia desafiante y gratificante, cuyo mayor riesgo es que se convierta en una herramienta de expresión reiterativa y un callejón sin salida. Sin embargo, el carácter investigativo del artista bien puede llevarlo más allá del filo del riesgo hacia propuestas refrescantes. Y es que ello tiene sus raíces en su enfoque de la vida, su contexto cotidiano y su marco conceptual, como él mismo afirma; "Mi trabajo es sobre la organización y el control de los materiales. Mi objetivo es seguir explorando las características estéticas de estos materiales y para comunicar un nuevo concepto de arte con texturas, expresar el movimiento y los ricos patrones visuales en el estudio del agua y su ritmo”.
En estos tiempos de la pos-contemporaneidad escribir sobre arte se hace cada vez más complejo, un riesgo. Donde cuestiones de identidad cultural, tendencias artísticas de giro rápido, las migraciones, las influencias transnacionales del arte, la preocupación en el equilibrio de la relación entre lo local / global y nuestra creciente conciencia de un entorno social interconectado en red, [donde lo visual sufre de saturación e hiper-produccion] son sólo algunas de las cuestiones del medio en el que los mapas del arte contemporáneo se van dibujando y transformando a velocidad abismal.
Desacelerar y llegar a comprender el artista, su obra y sus valores culturales se hace complejo. Escribir acerca de un artista emergente es mucho más complicado aún ya que el cuerpo extendido de su trabajo y obra y su integridad expresiva están por establecerse. Donde aún el artista es a plenitud parte de un proceso continuo, un viaje hacia el futuro en el que sus consecuencias a largo plazo está por desarrollarse.
En el caso de Enrique Machado, su arte es parte de un proceso de experimentación en curso. Su estudio, un laboratorio creativo, en el que la investigación de materiales, texturas, el color y la búsqueda de una expresión equilibrada son vitales para su contexto de vida. Donde el agua, la luz, la comunicación humana y el flujo orgánico dentro de los segmentos de la materia que él crea, son eje central de su pensamiento y vida. Su serie de pinturas Red Crash es un ejemplo.
El talento, la educación del talento y la capacidad de comunicación, es una forma de definir el carácter de un verdadero artista. Machado ha pasado por el camino de la educación de su talento artístico a través de una formación integral. Comenzó en el South Miami Middle School (Escuela Magnet de Arte), continuo en la prestigiosa DASH de Miami (High School de Diseño y Arquitectura), para graduarse en la famosa New World School of the Arts (Escuela de las Artes Nuevo Mundo en Miami) en 2004; posteriormente le es otorgada una beca para estudiar en el Instituto de Arte de Kansas City.
Su aproximación a la comunicación a través del arte, implica que el artista es quien produce conocimiento y narrativas a través de su obra, impulsado por los cambios constantes en el contexto de las interacciones sociales y culturales. Su percepción de la historia del arte como una herramienta de referencia existencial esencial, le permite estudiar un Van Gogh y un Jeff Koons por ejemplo, en una relación simétrica de experiencias de profundos matices, y así como artista abordar con serenidad e intensidad expresiva la complejidad comunicativa de los tiempos en los cuales su obra transita. Enrique trata de aprender de la historia en paralelo con el mundo en que vive, un contexto de balances necesarios entre lo local y lo global.
Su estudio, los experimentos y la investigación que desarrolla partiendo de la silicona como un material esencial, son sus acciones artísticas vitales. Al dialogar con este joven artista acerca de sus aspiraciones y visiones de su obra, lo expresa afirmando que desea que su trabajo con la silicona de alguna manera no sea lo que todos los demás pintores han hecho antes que él. Un deseo similar al que expresaba un artista que décadas atrás abordo riesgos de superficies y materiales sobre la tela, el expresionista abstracto Jackson Pollock, Machado parece buscar el camino de un enfoque poco ortodoxo para crear obras a su juicio, no convencionales. Ese es su desafío.
En la visión apocalíptica del siglo XXI, los ambientalistas frenéticos nos alertan que la ciudad de Miami quedara sumergida bajo las aguas en un par de años, tragada por el océano Atlántico. Investigadores de las ciencias del medio ambiente algo más discretos, explican que los cambios están ocurriendo al igual que cualquier otra ciudad-puerto con vista al mar y Miami podría verse afectado por las alteraciones de las masas de agua. Así, en una década marcada por un exceso simplista de la información, un mundo de obsesión digital y por el espectáculo social narcisista, la metáfora de Enrique en Miami, sobre el agua, el movimiento, la abstracción y la imaginación hacen su presencia calmada, equilibrada a través de su obra, con sus series “Olas”, el “Crash Series” y su serie “Agua que Corre”.
Después de todo, Enrique Machado es Miami, es el agua, es el medio ambiente y la diversidad urbana, siempre indagando el centro de las cosas. Enrique es un creador visual en torno al ejercicio de la visión y el descubrimiento y la posibilidad de volver a mirar sin prisas, con calma, en paz, llevando a cabo todas las preguntas necesarias que sus metáforas visuales aporten a nuestros ojos. Sus pinturas energéticas y sutiles llaman a la reflexión, flexionándola hacia sus propias fuerzas.
Jorge Luis Gutierrez
Museologo/ Curador
Julio 2014 ©
By: Carlos Suarez
Art Critic
Enrique Machado is a rare talent who adroitly combines his chosen media and subject matter to create arresting works that exist in the realm between painting and sculpture.
Born and raised in Miami where he attended the Design & Architecture High School and the New World School of the Arts before attending Kansas City Art Institute where he studied sculpture, Machado’s recent paintings are the result of a distinct, gesturally-manipulated accretion of materials at once experimental and impractical to pigeon hole.
The 28 year-old artist’s recent “Wave Series,” which includes large format mixed media paintings such as Crash, Tumbling Wave and a soaring outdoor mural on the exterior of a two-story building, push beyond figuration or abstraction while managing to harness the movement and ferocity of the natural environment.
The attention-commanding works bring to mind the classical ink brush painting known as The Great Wave, created by the Japanese master, Hokusai, during the late Edo period in the 1830’s. It depicts an enormous wave menacing a fishing village on the coast of Kanagawa with a view of the iconic Mount Fuji fixed in the distant background.
And, while the rising young talent also credits Van Gogh and his exaggerated style and use of patterns in ordinary landscapes as an inspiration, Machado’s work adopts a fresher, non-traditional approach employing ordinary tools and media from the corner hardware store to create his contemporary slant on the forces shaping nature and human consciousness.
Perhaps the most notable element of Machado’s practice is that he substitutes traditional paint brushes, oils, and acrylics with a caulking gun and colored tubes of silicone.
He creates his works by directly applying the silicone onto his chosen surfaces. In this labor-intensive process, he is earning raves from both the art world and collectors.
“In 2007 I came across this material that attracted all my senses as an artist,” explains Machado. “I picked up silicone and used it like any other material in my background. I saw that silicone came in black, grey, white, and clear, and thought of it like colors in an acrylic tube---only a much bigger one. So naturally I used it on a 2-D surface as if I were drawing. I noticed that as I squeezed out the silicone onto the canvas, it was a tool that made lines so I started using the silicone like marks of a pencil.”
Instinctively, Machado also began experimenting with movement, thickness and texture while applying his nozzle to canvas.
“It was at that point that I realized that I needed to incorporate all that I had learned about composition, contrast, lights and shadows, concept, and color,” mentions the artist while adding that he soon began experimenting with more colors.
“I had a moment of clarity and imagined what such a painting would look like,” recalls Machado. “I pictured all the texture and how it would be a cool 3-D painting. I filled the shopping cart with silicone caulking tubes, a caulking gun, and went home to make the first Silicone Art work. I instantly fell in love with the process because I was excited to paint all over again,” he says.
As Machado began mastering his new medium he also began maturing his studio practice while exploring the introduction of sculpture onto a flat and restricted surface.
“I love how the texture creates its own shadows and reflects its own light along with its concrete solid blocks of color gleaming from all angles as if it was always wet and never dry,” enthuses the artist. “I noticed how the works were always alive, always moving, dripping, showing depth, and bringing in the viewer for an intimate, esthetic experience. Accomplishing this is all I've wanted to do in making art, whether it was drawing with charcoals or acrylics. Painting was always fundamentally the same for me,” reflects Machado. “It’s the experience and gravitational rawness of the work that keeps me pulling back and forth from sculptural textures to a restricted 2-dimensional painting.”
In fact in a series called “Crash,” rendered with bright monochrome fields of rainbow splashes contrasted by beached-bone accumulations of silicone ribbons, the paintings exude a shiny efflorescence imbuing the works with a notion of the ecology in conflict and a more profound need for humanity to better steward our planet.
“My work revolves around a power bigger than ourselves and a sense of an overwhelming shower of inevitability crashing down and creating chaos in its process,” observes Machado. “But, not unlike the ocean, that power can be violent one moment and calm the next,” he adds.
Machado also says that his stylized depictions of the waves and ocean surrounding his hometown of Miami are an expression of life and its struggles.
“The foam-like textures speak like loud noise and confusion while the resin colors are solidly assertive and clear in its existence. The whirls and movements might hint to the journey of one’s afflictions only to disperse in all different directions before the final clash,” he muses.
Machado also acknowledges that for him, rooting his paintings in a vision of a deeper spirituality is important.
“I seem to have a presence of a "center" in my paintings which reflect themes of balance and discourse, contradiction vs. truth, themes of obsessions, chaos, serenity, surrender, and acceptance. The ocean, waves, and water are a metaphor for these themes in my works,” concludes the thoughtful, soft-spoken artist.
Carlos Suarez
Art Critic
2014