Carlos Rojas

The innovative outlook that guided the exhibition was conceived by three young artists and researchers (Julián Serna, Nicolás Gómez and Felipe González), whose fundamental interest was to relate the worlds which marked Carlos Rojas ́s gaze with their original abstract proposal. Abiding by that logic, and aligning with Rojas ́s concern with analyzing what he encountered along the way both from a structural and expressive point of view, the curators organized the exhibition space in such a way that it might suggest to the spectator the connection between lower and higher planes – those associated to creation and those associated to observation. To this end, many museological devices lowered, even to floor level, the customary exhibition horizon line, in order to allow the viewer to discern the articulations with the profound analytic relationship the artist maintained with his entourage that are present in his proposal. This also includes his relationship with the objects and works he collected in the course of his life, as well as with the creations and images he was interested in. Thus, the indissoluble link between Rojas, the collector and the being with multiple and passionate interests that he was, and Rojas, the creator, became clear. Without a chronological order and without strict divisions in the creation by series into which the artist ́s oeuvre has been catalogued, this exhibition set out parallelisms between abstraction, environment and vision processes which had only been known to specialists or connoisseurs of Carlos Rojas ́s work. This gave rise to a reading contaminated in a certain way by the artist ́s own voice, which contributed to an understanding of some of his most radical statements, such as:

I have never created anything. I have fulfilled things through a research process. That which I study, analyze and compare yields some common denominators which, when agglomerated, give rise to a result, and this result is the artwork. In order for this artwork to be a creation, it would have to arise from nothingness, and my work is the product of a series of things, the sum of which is called a ́painting ́.

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If I say tree, it might be a lollipop, because it has a trunk and a crown. But the difference between both resides in the material elements of texture and color which make that same rendering of a stick and a small ball cease to be a lollipop and become a tree. For me, abstraction is the simplification of elements starting out from a complex naturalist whole.

In Colombia in particular, where due to the demands of discernment through the documentary to which the artistic proposals of the visual arts have been subjected, an attunement with abstract or geometric languages has traditionally been non-existent, the generation of relationships between the public and the artists themselves and works such as those by Rojas turns out to be quite definitive. The analytic recovery of proposals by artists such as Rojas contributes to the understanding, in a context so very marked by the urgencies and demands of confrontation, of the enormous importance that a profound knowledge of the structural and the formal as raison d ́être has for any critical conception, even for one of a political nature, and this within a vast articulation with different fields of expression and knowledge.

As far as pure visual aspects are concerned, Rojas was not only an abstract painter and sculptor, but he was also an exceptional draftsman in the more realistic sense of the word, a designer, constructor and great analyst of images as the product of certain conditions that render them necessary. But in addition to this, Rojas was a devoted lover of music, literature, philosophy and exact sciences, a love born in him as an extension of his interest in finding the geometric foundation of existence, which he always associated to the idea of God.

As revealed by the exhibition Carlos Rojas, una visita a sus mundos/Carlos Rojas, a visit to his worlds, this artist ́s abstract formulation arose from a very sensible understanding of multiple instances of its context and historical process, which allowed him to reformulate and situate in a creative place, with characteristics that were equally creative and propositional, ideas and approaches sometimes imposed, and other times imported with some harmonic intent. In this way, geometry ́s minimalist rigors and demands acquired, in Rojas ́s hands, a baroque delirium of exalted color, in which the Latin American spirit, with the extreme cultural and social contradictions it contains, gains in relevant and autonomous value, devoid of discursive dilettantism. The demands of planetary integration of creative and communicative codes that the 20th century speeded up have been met with monumentality in this continent through visions such as Rojas ́s, strengthened by an intense apprehension of the world. This aspect in particular drove a mystic sensibility like his to become familiar with a large number of Latin American peoples, processes and expressions, and to represent them in a universalized way through the sensible appropriation of the parameters prevailing in what has been termed the international panorama.

This possibility of communicating interpretations from both extremes arose in Rojas due to the fact that, with the same curiosity with which he delved into his own culture, he absorbed that of others in his travels in countries zealous of their traditions, such as Italy, or devoted to different notions of progress, such as the United States. He was enthusiastic about many cities, which he admired as much as he admired New York, but he always understood them through the comprehension he had acquired as a child regarding the landscape and the organizational logic of towns like Facatativá, where he was born and where he lived at important moments in his life. Therefore, the introspections on the meanings of distant universes that can be found in a body of work such as Rojas ́s are not few, in the same way that the considerations on the abstract element present in the material or the real and vice-versa, which can be read in his proposal, are not few, either.

If Rojas ́s formulation is studied attentively, this artist may even be regarded as one of the leading artists in Latin America. It is understandable that the conflictive circumstances of the Colombian process should have enshrouded in mist an abstract contribution such as his, and that for the same reason another possibility of realistic expression on his part should have been overlooked. However, in spite of the fact that conflict continues to be a constant in Colombia, the historical moment is different now, and it demands radical revisions such as the ones that began to take place under the young outlook that designed the tribute to Carlos Rojas. Free from commitments or indebtedness to tradition, this revision opened up the possibility to appreciate, once again, the enormous complexity of his gaze in every sense, and to redefine the place deserved by this creator who, quite unfairly, has not been included among the great thinkers of abstract art in his continent.

Profile

Carlos Rojas (Facatativá, 18.4.1933 – Bogotá, 2.5.1997) studied architecture at the Javeriana University and painting at theSchoolofFineArtsoftheNationalUniversity.Hebeganto exhibit his works at the end of the 1950s; a scholarship from the National Government enabled him to travel to Italy, where he majored in Applied Design at the School of Fine Arts in Rome. On his return, in 1960, he devoted himself fully to his artistic work, and remained active until the moment of his demise. He worked as a design adviser for Artesanías de Colombia; he served as professor of visual arts, graphic and industrial design in different universities in Bogotá, and coordinated exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in Bogotá, as well as several editions of the National Salon and the Coltejer Biennial; he was the founder of the Colombian Bonsai Association and the owner of a prominent collection of artworks and art objects. Carlos Rojas is considered one of the most distinguished artists in Colombia, who has stood out for having applied in his work the codes of 20th century European and North American avant- garde movements from a local perspective.