Moneiba Lemes

La fiesta es para todos

Sala de Arte Contemporneo

Santa Cruz de Tenerife
Del 19 de diciembre de 2014 al 13 de febrero de 2015

Centro de Arte La Regenta

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
Del 10 de julio al 12 de septiembre de 2015

GOBIERNO DE CANARIAS / CANARY ISLANDS GOVERNMENT

Consejera de Cultura, Deportes, Polticas Sociales y Vivienda / Minister for Culture, Sport, Social Policies and Housing
Ins Rojas de Len
Director General de Cultura / Managing Director of Culture
Xerach Gutirrez Ortega
Coordinacin Departamento de Artes Plsticas / Coordination of the Fine Art Department
Carlos Daz-Bertrana Marrero
Alejandro Vitaubet Gonzlez
Gabinete de Comunicacin / Press Department
Patricia Masset Paredes
Desire Rieu Corona
CENTROS DE ARTE CONTEMPORNEO. TENERIFE / CENTERS OF CONTERMPORARY ART. TENERIFE
Director / Director
Carlos Daz-Bertrana Marrero
Gestin de exposiciones / Exhibition Management
Dolly Fernndez Casanova
Administracin / Administration
Mercedes Arocha Isidro
Mara Victoria Carballo Fernndez
Coordinacin exposiciones Instituto Canarias Cabrera Pinto / Exhibition Management Instituto Canarias Cabrera Pinto
Nora Barrera Lujn
Departamento de Educacin y Accin Cultural / Department of Education and Cultural Action
Jos Luis Prez Navarro
Direccin de Montaje / Installation Management
Juan Lpez Salvador
Carlos Matallana Manrique
Montaje de exposiciones / Exhibitions Installation
Juan Pedro Ayala Oliva
Jos Antonio Delgado Domnguez

CENTRO DE ARTE LA REGENTA / CENTER OF ART LA REGENTA

Director / Director
Alejandro Vitaubet Gonzlez

Seguros / Insurance
Hermeiza e Hijos Corredura de seguros S.L.
Transporte / Transport
Direccin General de Cultura Gobierno de Canarias

Administracin / Administration
Jos Manuel Prez Surez
Margarita Prez Talavera

CATLOGO / CATALOGUE

Gestin de Exposiciones / Exhibitions Management

Teresa Expsito Felipe

de los textos / Texts

Ramn Salas Lamami de Clairac
David Barro Lpez
Jos Antonio Otero Cabrera

Centro de Documentacin / Documentation Centre

Nuria Gonzlez Gili
Departamento de Educacin y Accin Cultural / Department of Education and Cultural Action
Natalia Ferrando Rodrguez
Marta Vega Gonzlez
Transporte y Correspondencia / Transport and Post
Jos Mara Betancor Surez
Montaje de Exposiciones / Exhibitions Installation
Jos Miguel Yurrita de Simn
Miguel ngel Surez Quesada

de las imgenes / Images

Moneiba Lemes
El Roto
Juan Luis Snchez
Diseo y Maquetacin / Design and Layout
Israel Prez
Traducciones / Translations
Lambe & Nieto
Impresin / Printing
Litografa Grficas Sabater, S.L.

EXPOSICIN / EXHIBITION
Comisario / Curator
Ramn Salas Lamami de Clairac
Coordinacin / Coordination
Teresa Expsito Felipe
Diseo grfico / Graphic Design
Pedro Dniz
Montaje / Installation
Jos Miguel Yurrita de Simn
Miguel ngel Surez Quesada

ISBN: 978-84-7947-635-9
D.L.: GC 546-2015
AGRADECIMIENTOS / WITH THANKS TO
A todos los que han colaborado en este proyecto:
Ramn Salas, David Barro, Israel Prez, Jos Otero, El
Roto, Juan Luis Snchez y muy especialmente a Jos
Marcial Lemes y Arminda Lemes / To all those who have
worked on this project: Ramn Salas, David Barro, Israel
Prez, Jos Otero, El Roto, Juan Luis Snchez and
particularly to Jos Marcial Lemes and Arminda Lemes.
Imagen de cubierta:
Sn ttulo. leo sobre lienzo. 120 x 162 cm. 2015 (detalle)

11

PODEMOS PINTAR?

69

CAN WE PAINT?
Ramn Salas

45

DESHACER PARA CONSTRUIR LA IMAGEN.

LOS VERSOS SUELTOS DE MONEIBA LEMES

81

BUILDING THE IMAGE BY PARING AWAY.

MONEIBA LEMESS FREE VERSES
David Barro

57

LA FIESTA ES PARA TODOS:

UNA CONVERSACIN CON MONEIBA LEMES

87

EVERYONES INVITED TO THE PARTY:

A CONVERSATION WITH MONEIBA LEMES
Jos Otero

Podemos pintar?
Ramn Salas

Moneiba Lemes es una joven artista

con una no tan bisoa trayectoria. Mucho antes de acabar la carrera haba ya
expuesto, en las principales salas del
Archipilago una obra de prematura
madurez. Tanto es as que se hizo frecuente hablar de su generacin (Ral
Artles, M Laura Benavente, Javier
Corzo, Nestor Delgado, David Ferrer,
Rayco Mrquez, Adrin Martnez, Damin Rodriguez, Arstides Santana,
Noelia Villena) como los moneibos,
una cohorte de artistas que se form
en una Facultad de Bellas Artes en
transicin. Ellos conformaron el grupo

piloto del que luego nacera el itinerario

de Proyectos transdisciplinares, una
apuesta docente por responder a las
reiteradas crticas recibidas por el hipottico protagonismo concedido a la
pintura en la facultad. Efectivamente,
los moneibos coincidieron con buena
parte de la cohorte de lo que dimos en
llamar Escuela de La Laguna (Alby
lamo, Francisco Castro, Pipo Hernndez, Martn y Sicilia, Ubay Murillo,
Jos Otero) en el uso frecuente de la
pintura, pero ahora esta disciplina se
mezclaba, ms abierta y frecuentemente si cabe, con otros procedimientos de
trabajo.
La pintura de Moneiba tena muchas
afinidades con la de sus predecesores. Y no pocas diferencias. Como la
de aquellos, la suya era una pintura de
gnero, en la que el entorno cercano,
cuando no directamente ntimo, jugaba
un papel protagonista como fondo y

En la pgina 9:
Celebracin. leo sobre lienzo. 55 x 55 cm. 2015
En la pgina anterior:
Mauerpark. leo sobre lienzo. 195 x 270 cm.
2014 (detalle)

11

Avda. Trinidad. leo sobre lienzo. 120 x 145 cm. 2007

Limn. leo sobre lienzo. 50 x 50 cm. 2008

12

como figura. No era este, desde luego,

un problema de cortedad de miras,
sino ms bien todo lo contrario. Su intento de definir las subjetividades en un
entorno moralmente minimalista haba
remontado la relacin entre lo personal
y lo poltico desde el entorno situacionista, en el que sola ubicarse, no solo
hasta Hopper sino hasta Hammershi,
Chardin y Vermeer. Eso no solo referenciaba el problema de la identidad,
con frecuencia naturalizado, en un
horizonte intertextual que subrayaba
ahora su naturaleza narrativa (y la
crisis de esta misma narratividad), sino
que les permita vincular los escenarios
de la subjetividad con el mbito de lo
burgus. El problema de la (prdida
de la) identidad se haba visto con excesiva frecuencia desplazado hacia el
territorio de la subalternidad y lo vernculo, cuando, en realidad, era la clase
media urbana la que se vea cada da
ms amenazada y desubicada. Estos
artistas integrantes de esa clase,
como la pintura, en peligro de extincin abordaron su trabajo en el entorno cercano, fsica y afectivamente,
convencidos de que lo que les estaba
ocurriendo personalmente a ellos era,
sencillamente, lo que estaba ocurriendo. Y lo que lo que estaba ocurriendo,
lejos de resultar anecdtico o particular, conoca relevantes connotaciones
histricas y polticas que seguramente
se remontaban al nacimiento sincrnico
de la pintura y la burguesa a mediados
del XVI y culminaban con la corrupcin
del carcter en el postfordismo.
La suya era la primera generacin de
artistas canarios en casi un siglo que
no tuvieron a Canarias como tema, es
decir, que no heredaron un programa
determinado y determinista. Por otra

parte, tampoco asumieron los estilos

metropolitanos como una imposicin.
Eran artistas insulares, es decir, acostumbrados a trabajar en un entorno tan
informado como distante de sus referentes, y bajo la atenta mirada de un
crculo de interlocucin reducido y cercano. No heredaron referentes locales y
les dio cierta vergenza echarse en los
brazos de los internacionales: supongo
que cuando uno vive en la metrpolis
no tiene muchas posibilidades de nadar
contra una corriente demasiado potente y seductora; pero en las islas la decisin de nadar a favor de corriente no
es ms que eso, una decisin, porque
la corriente, en realidad, no pasa por
aqu, no nos arrastra. Y nadar a favor
de corriente fuera de la corriente da
cierta vergenza, sobre todo cuando
compartes un estudio en el que todo
el mundo puede ver el catlogo que
est sobre la mesa. Supongo que de
ah surgi esa extraa y persistente
disposicin a un cierto anacronismo, a
una cierta resistencia a dejarse llevar.
Supongo tambin que de ah surgi la
(extraa) decisin de pintar. Y esa es,
sin duda, la caracterstica ms definitoria de la Escuela de La Laguna,
compartida con compaeros que,
como Lecuona y Hernndez o Prez y
Requena no practicaban literalmente la
pintura (a pesar de que la pintura es un
tema recurrente en su proceso creativo): todos ellos vivan la condicin de
artista como una decisin (claramente
conceptual) que les emplazaba a generar imgenes tan alejadas de las fuentes
originarias de sentido como del ruido
visual de la sociedad del espectculo
y del mainstream. Una decisin, pues,
extempornea, que les obligaba a buscarle un sentido que no tena de suyo. Y

Barquero. leo sobre lienzo. 65 x 50 cm. 2010

Baistas. leo sobre lienzo. 190 x 200 cm. 2011

por eso podan pintar, porque la pintura

no poda ya practicarse ms que en un
plano metapictrico, reflexionando sobre su propia improcedencia. Por eso
su pintura adquira un claro sesgo neobarroco, hablaba de pintura, pero no
del lenguaje autnomo, de la materia
significante o de la planitud identificante: hablaba del estudio, del entorno, del
acto conceptual y del compromiso de
pintar. Pese a sus cordiales relaciones
con muchos artistas ochenteros, en
especial con Dokoupil, nunca echaron

mano del recurso a la autolegitimacin

de la pintura en trminos romnticos:
como una espita para la expresividad,
la pasin, la carnalidad, el genio largamente reprimidos por el fro ensimismamiento conceptual y tardomodernista. Ellos decidieron escoger la pintura
no por lo obvio sino por lo dudoso de
la misma. Esa decisin, claro est, les
provoc no pocas incertidumbres. Pero
resultaba coherente, toda vez que haban decidido, precisamente, tematizar
la incertidumbre. Una incertidumbre

13

Baistas. leo sobre lienzo. 50 x 50 cm. 2011

Barquero. leo sobre lienzo. 65 x 50 cm. 2010

Aicha. leo sobre lienzo. 70 x 45 cm. 2012

En la pgina siguiente:
Extintos. leo sobre lienzo. 165 x 195 cm. 2009

16

que compartan generacionalmente

pero que vivan individualmente, cada
cual la suya, representndose en una
deriva carente de la ms mnima pica
situacionista: flneurs entre bastidores,
paseantes de sus propios desvos, no
tenan nada ms que contar (ni nada
menos) que la historia de una generacin que haba heredado la costumbre
de contar historias, de practicar la bio.
grafa, de tratar de darle cuerpo narrativo a sus vidas, pero a la que le haba
tocado vivir en un ambiente marcado
por el oportunismo, la improvisacin,
la falta de sentido, la incoherencia, la
adaptabilidad
Pero la Escuela de La Laguna, a pesar de su amor por la mala pintura,
derivada de su inters por subrayar la
eleccin conceptual del medio a despecho de sus cualidades disciplinares,
siempre concedi un gran protagonismo al dibujo estructurante. La incertidumbre de sus figuras no se tradujo
en indefinicin: habitaban sus espacios
de trnsito con una estereometra que
por analoga a Oramas, Ismael, Dominguez, Fleitas, Gregorio o Millares
s podramos considerar canaria.
La liquidez, que tan de moda pusiera
Bauman, sera la gran aportacin de
los moneibos. La incertidumbre de
una generacin que se senta viviendo
una historia que no contaba con ellos,
que no les haca hueco en el sinsentido,
haba terminado por disolverles. Como
en el chiste del borracho echando balones fuera deja de beber que te ests
volviendo borroso, esta generacin
empez a sentir que la ebriedad de sus
dirigentes, que les haba instalado en
una burbuja, comenzaba a desdibujarles. La rotunda perplejidad de sus
compaeros algo mayores (que vivan

en un mundo en el que no encajaban

pero que an les ofreca oportunidades,
ms o menos espurias pero aparentemente slidas) adquiri en la pintura de
Moneiba un tono ms sutil, ms melanclico, ms potico. Sus baistas,
turistas y otros entes flotantes haban
perdido la consistencia monumental de
los de Ubay Murillo. La escenografa
se haba convertido en atmsfera, las
habitaciones de hotel parecan ms un
recuerdo o una fantasmagora que un
parque temtico. Los objetos mudos
de Jos Otero parecan convertirse en
la obra de Moneiba en un murmullo,
cuando no en una postimagen de la retina. Las ancdotas y microrrelatos de
Alby lamo vean como su narratividad
se converta en las escenas de Moneiba
en un hilo cada vez ms tenue, como
si las historias no llegaran a poder
sintonizarse del todo. Tuymans haba
liquidado a Hopper. Pareca que los
personajes en busca de autor haban
perdido la expectativa de encontrar un
guin que justificara su entidad como
figura y haban optado por mimetizarse
con el fondo, salvaguardando lo nico
que pareca indubitable en un mundo
en el que el realismo se construa sobre
burbujas: la conveniencia de suspender
la obsesin aprehensora y de demorarse en los matices poticos que ofreca
la propia inconsistencia de lo real.
En unos pocos aos, casi meses, el
imaginario crtico en Canarias haba
cambiado diametralmente. Antes, la
conciencia de que todo lo (moralmente)
slido se desvaneca en el aire postfordista se traduca paradjicamente
en masivas hileras de hormign. De
repente, aquel paisaje se convirti en
ruinas. No s bien qu tendr esto que
ver, pero el 15 de septiembre de 2008,

Retrato de grupo. leo sobre lienzo. 56 x 73cm. 2012

Stage diving. leo sobre lienzo. 80 x 100 cm . 2011

El Apartamento. Open estudio. 2011

En la pgina siguiente:
Menschenmenge. leo sobre lienzo. 190 x 200 cm. 2015

18

el da que cay Lehman Brothers, los

cuadros de Moneiba estaban colgados
en la primera edicin de 25 pies, el programa de exposiciones que presentara
en sociedad a los moneibos. No es
extrao que la melancola se convirtiera
entonces en un tono general que cobraba tintes tardomodernos. No, desde
luego, porque reclamara la pureza disciplinar de la pintura como un espacio
de trascendente autonoma frente a un
arte estratgico, pero s porque demostraba una cierta sensibilidad hacia lo
inefable. Posiblemente Moneiba Lemes
fuera la pintora ms dotada (en ese
sentido en el que el gremio decimos de
alguien que tiene buena mano) de la
generacin 25 pies, pero su trabajo
nunca hizo alardes de oficio ni se com-

placi en su fluidez. De hecho, pareca

parar siempre a punto de empezar a
pintar. Su nica soberbia consista en
negarse a darle brillo o apariencia de
consistencia a un mundo que perciba
en disolucin. Su trabajo no era nada
anecdtico (a diferencia no solo del
de la Escuela de La Laguna sino del
de la inmensa mayora del arte postmoderno), se instalaba precisamente
en ese espacio de resistencia, entre
las cosas y su imagen, que resulta mal
conductor para la representacin, como
si quisiera demorar el advenimiento
de la significacin, distraer la lectura,
suspender el afn de reconocimiento
para cultivar el encanto de lo inaprensible, de las pequeas sublimidades
que quedan ms all de la razn de

Vieta publicada en El Pas el 18 de mayo de

2011.El Roto.

Manifestacin. leo sobre lienzo. 61 x 73 cm. 2015

20

los fines. Moneiba haba abandonado

la prosa para practicar la poesa, esa
funcin de lenguaje que se demora en
el significante. Aunque, para ser ms
exactos, la suya era una prosa potica:
los restos de ancdota resultaban cada
vez ms irrelevantes, pero tampoco se
iba por las nubes. La fuerza gravitatoria de la intimidad, los cronotopos de
la amistad, esos espacio-tiempos en
los que lo poltico decanta en escenas
locales, siempre le brind a su obra un
suelo dialogal. Quiz por ello, incluso
cuando, como ahora, hace individuales, Moneiba es pintora de colectivas.
Yo, al menos, soy incapaz de desligar
su trabajo del entorno, de sustraerme
a los ecos de una multitud que decanta
en su crculo ms cercano.
Haba una cierta complacencia, ms o
menos estetizante, en la descripcin de
un mundo lquido?, era el trabajo de
Moneiba, de Ral, de Adrin, de Nstor
o de Corzo, un intento de aprender a
flotar en un medio lquido?, era el trabajo de David, de Laura, de Rayco, de
Noelia, de Arstides o de Damin una
vacuna para habituarse a un mundo
siniestro? o estas preguntas son solo
un sntoma de la deriva hacia el maniquesmo del arte contemporneo, que
ha vendido por el plato de lentejas de
la radicalidad tranquilizadora, el potencial revolucionario de la incertidumbre,
del intento de inocular al interlocutor la
actitud contingente que se ha empleado en la creacin la imagen? El mundo
se haba hecho materialista, todos los
valores se traducan a PIB y hasta las
fuerzas crticas queran cotizar en el
mercado de la eficacia. Los unos no
queran darse cuenta de que la supuesta tangibilidad de sus beneficios se cimentaba en el ms abstracto (abstruso

cabra decir) entramado de juegos financieros, los otros no parecan entender que cualquier transformacin del
sistema requera una lucha simblica
contra su hiperrealismo. Y, de la noche
a la maana, la solidez de la economa
mundial se desplom con la fragilidad
de un castillo de naipes. El aplomo con
el que miles de trabajadores endeudaban el resto de su vida cay sobre
s mismo. Profesionales competitivos
se vieron expulsados del sistema. A la
maana siguiente, su rostro en el espejo era otro. Nada en su competencia
haba fallado, pero tampoco haban
tenido tiempo de pagar el deportivo. Se
encontraron de nuevo viviendo en casa
de sus padres, an sin darse cuenta
de que la haban utilizado como aval.
Conforme las burbujas ganaban consistencia, el aplomo y el hormign se
hacan ms inconsistentes. Cul era
entonces la realidad?, cmo representarla?, haban resultado premonitorios
los desenfoques de Moneiba?
En estas circunstancias, pareca evidente que la contestacin al sistema
exiga tcticas y estrategia, pero tambin un cambio en los sistemas de
representacin. Mucho ms all de su
torpe explotacin en ciertos eventos
expositivos no poco oportunistas, el
15-M s tuvo una dimensin esttica.
Aquella acampada, que le dio una inesperada dimensin simblica al vivir
a la intemperie, plante no solo un
ejemplo de que los sujetos podran vivir
de otro modo, sino de que deban ser
representados de otra forma.

Me parece entender que en el cuadro

Celebracin se introduce un elemento novedoso, una forma de proceder
distinta respecto a mi trabajo anterior:

Celebracin. leo sobre lienzo. 195 x 270 cm. 2014

Celebracin. leo sobre lienzo. 195 x 270 cm. 2014 (detalle)

aqu el grupo principal a retratar permanece en el fondo, observando a

una pareja de infantes que baila en el
centro del cuadro, casi vaco. El motivo
de la reunin nos es desconocido (qu
celebran?, qu hacen ah?). Las imgenes posteriores de celebraciones y
reuniones que son el grueso de esta
exposicin van a articularse segn
este modelo compositivo; recurriendo

22

a la ausencia de un motivo central. La

figura se convierte en fondo, el sujeto
se convierte en masa. La pintura se expande y se aplana; es una fiesta de la
pintura. (Moneiba Lemes)

Estoy de acuerdo con Moneiba respecto al carcter novedoso de Celebracin,

pero no s si por los mismos motivos.
Es cierto que hasta ese momento Mo-

neiba tena una ms o menos constante

tendencia a centrar las figuras, a darles
un aire velazquiano o manetiano
que subrayaba una relacin incierta con
su fondo. Pero el vaco no es nuevo en
su pintura, ni la incertidumbre. Ese no
saber qu hacen ah los personajes
es una constante en su obra anterior
a Celebracin. Pero s es cierto que la
incertidumbre tena antes un carcter
ms privado y ahora marcadamente
social. Inconscientemente, la obra
de Moneiba converga con la de otro
miembro en excedencia de la Escuela
de La Laguna, Teresa Arozena que,
en su ltima obra, trata de retratar en
la masa al nuevo sujeto colectivo. Y
tambin en el espacio festivo. Pero la
solucin de Moneiba, pese a las coincidencias temticas con la de Arozena,
deriva hacia otros derroteros por mor
del propio medio: si la fotografa tiende
a lo documental la pintura tiende a lo
intertextual.
La progresiva disgregacin de las manchas de color en la pintura de Moneiba
recuerda, en la distancia, al puntillismo.
En efecto, La Fiesta es para todos ironiza con una de las grandes aportaciones del impresionismo al diletantismo
crtico: hay que alejarse para ver lo
que est representado en el cuadro. La
pintura pompier tena una profundidad
de campo infinita, todo estaba enfocado por igual, independientemente
de la distancia a la que se hallara del
plano de la visin. Era lgico: si para
la mentalidad cristiana los sentidos engaan cuando no son directamente
pecaminosos no tiene razn de ser
que se desdibujen las figuras, para ser
fieles a su percepcin fenomenolgica,
cuando lo cierto es que su integridad
no depende del lugar que ocupen. En

efecto, uno de los mayores servicios

de la pintura a la metafsica clsica es
precisamente el de darle a las figuras
una consistencia y permanencia que de
suyo no poseen. Tampoco tiene pues
nada de particular que la crtica preimpresionista a ese clasicismo pompier se
adelantar unos aos al desarrollo de
la fotografa instantnea, no solo alterando los encuadres (Degas, Toulouse
Lautrec) sino enfocando selectivamente
los distintos elementos del cuadro (Manet). Esa percepcin taquigrfica, que
Baudelaire identific como la propia del
pintor de la vida moderna, disolvi los
perfiles de las figuras hasta convertirlas
en meras manchas de pintura. Greenberg interpret esta decisin como
una evidencia de la tendencia del arte
moderno a la abstraccin, a plegar la
pintura sobre s misma, mostrando un
desprecio por el tema frente al medio
que se pona de manifiesto en el hecho de que pintaran a cualquiera.
Algo haba de cierto, aunque, para ser
exactos, ms que resultarles indiferente
estaban especialmente interesados en
pintar a los burgueses, a los habitantes
del burgo, en su recin conquistada
condicin de unos cualquiera. La metrpolis era el espacio del advenedizo,
los inmigrantes haban abandonado su
pequeo y conservador mundo rural,
donde la escasa movilidad social preservaba una identidad que se remontaba a tiempos inmemoriales: el seor
lo era en virtud de su linaje, de igual
forma que el labriego haba heredado
su condicin de sus ancestros, desde
el principio de los tiempos y merced
a una voluntad divina que santificaba
el statu quo. La ciudad era el espacio
secularizado donde los burgueses pretendan desacreditar la alcurnia para

Claude Monet. Boulevard de los Capuchinos. leos sobre lienzo. 1873-74

Menschenmenge. leo sobre lienzo.

150 x 185 cm. 2014

23

douard Manet. Msica en los jardines de las Tulleras.

leo sobre lienzo. 1862
En las pginas anteriores:
Sin ttulo. leo sobre lienzo. 50 x 118 cm. 2014

Reunines. leo sobre lienzo. 38 x 60 cm. 2015

trocar la identidad en perfectibilidad: lo

que en adelante distinguira a los individuos sera precisamente el hecho de no
ser idnticos a s mismos, sino capaces
de hacer con sus vidas algo diferente a
lo prefigurado por nacimiento. La realizacin personal no tendra que ver con
la fidelidad a los modelos ancestrales
heredados sino, precisamente, con la
capacidad de superarlos. Si el arte clsico fijaba para la eternidad, siguiendo
las pautas dictadas por la tradicin, los
modelos comunitarios en los que habamos de mirarnos, parece lgico que
los pintores modernos, encargados
de representar, es decir, de fijar en el
imaginario, a los burgueses, es decir,
a esos sujetos abiertos a la posibilidad
del cambio, pintaran figuras inacaba-

26

das, abocetadas. Esa subjetividad en

proceso era adems coherente con
la nueva percepcin fenomenolgica,
derivada de la tcnica y no heredada
de la tradicin, que disolva el dibujo en
partculas de color y haca del enfoque
una cuestin selectiva.
En Msica en las Tulleras (1862) el
desenfoque afecta a la prctica totalidad del cuadro: los ciudadanos se han
convertido en fondo, ese mismo fondo
social sobre el que tratan de definir
una subjetividad que ya no depende
del registro civil sino de escaramuzas
interpersonales en un mundo de relaciones. Las pinceladas largas, abiertas
y disgregadas de Manet hacen casi
audible la msica que arracima al
cuerpo social: la multitud se representa

como un murmullo que parece disolver toda la consistencia de los sujetos

clsicos, el motivo solo se aprecia de
lejos, algo que no tiene que ver con
un truco pictrico formalista, sino con
el hecho de ahora los rboles deban
dejar ver el bosque. Curiosamente, esta
tradicin moderna se vio obliterada
durante ms de un siglo por la alianza
romntico-modernista, que convirti
las pinceladas abiertas en un medio
para la expresividad verncula o la pureza ahistrica de la abstraccin. Solo
hace apenas unas dcadas la fotografa
recuper para el arte la tradicin de la
vida moderna y, as, pudimos volver a
relacionar la pincelada taquigrfica con
su verdadero contenido sociopoltico.
La Escuela de Vancouver, que tanto
interes a la Escuela de La Laguna,
precisamente como corriente pictrica,
recuper al Manet que, en sus obras
con mltiples personajes, se centraba
en esos vacos interiores en los que la
coexistencia fsica deja ver la dificultad
de los encuentros personales.
De manera anloga, el anlisis del
puntillismo, que descompona el color
en su triada bsica para obligar a la
vista a reconfigurarlo sintticamente,
se haba focalizado en su componente
cientificista. Pero lo cierto es que, en
los cuadros de Seurat, esta referencia
a la percepcin tcnica revela inditas
dificultades para dar cohesin interna
a la distante proximidad de las figuras
contra el fondo de la no menos novedosa coexistencia urbana de naturaleza
y e industria. Si la representacin clsica mediaba a travs de creencias e
historias compartidas la percepcin de
los actores sociales, que cumplan un
papel definido en el relato comunitario,
la nueva mirada cientfica disgregaba

no solo los puntos de color: los cuadros no parecen admitir ms relato que
el de la incapacidad del espacio social
para dar a los personajes otro papel
que el de figurantes. En Una tarde de
domingo en la isla de la Grande Jatte
(1884) podan coexistir diferentes clases y generaciones, formas de vida y
vestir, en una cercana tensionada por
la falta de intimidad. Si en las Tulleras
podamos or el murmullo, en Asnieres
(1884) parece escucharse el silencio
social contra el rumor sordo del fondo
industrial.
El proceso de concentracin fsica y
disgregacin social vinculado a la urbanizacin y tecnificacin est sin duda
ligado a la desintegracin de la pincelada y el extraamiento de la pintura.
Es en ese momento cuando el arte comienza a demandar sentido. Esa queja
tan popular contra los cuadros que no
se defienden por s solos, que demandan una explicacin, no tiene tanto que
ver con la conceptualizacin del arte
como con la crisis moderna del relato
comunitario. La pintura nunca ha sido
intuitiva. La melanclica expectativa de
accesibilidad deriva del olvido de que
antes compartamos un concepto de
belleza y una iconografa sagrada.
Llamamos modernidad precisamente
a la disolucin en el aire de ese slido
patrimonio, pero no solo en lo referente
a la estereometra fsica de las figuras
pintadas sino tambin al cuerpo de
doctrina que haca verosmil esa integridad. Los contemporneos de Manet
y Seurat empezaron a sentir como propio el hecho indito de no tener ms
en comn que una confluencia espacio
temporal y una creciente conciencia de
esa contingencia. Un spleen, del que
solo un cierto ensimismamiento poda

Una tarde de domingo en la isla de La Grande Jatte.

Georges Seurat. leo sobre lienzo. 1884-86

Baistas en Asnires. Georges Seurat. leo sobre

lienzo. 1884

27

Mauerpark. leo sobre lienzo. 195 x 270 cm. 2014

Manifestacin. leo sobre lienzo. 61 x 73 cm. 2015.

Coleccin Domingo Socorro

Peligro. leo sobre lienzo. 90 x 130 cm. 2014

defenderles, especialmente perceptible

la tarde del domingo.
La fiesta, durante siglos, marc los
ritmos agrarios, que eran ritmos csmicos, tutelados por un santoral que
tambin nos proporcionaba los santos
patrones de la comunidad. La vida estaba definida por unos condicionantes
geogrficos que no estaban sujetos
a discusin que exigan unos saberes
vernculos y ajustaban los trabajos y
las horas a unos patrones de regularidad, tanto climatolgica como social,
tutelados por las divinidades locales y
sus representantes en la tierra. Por la

gracia de Dios. La fiesta celebraba la liturgia que aseguraba esta continuidad,

y daba trascendencia al vivir juntos. En
ese contexto de romera, la imagen
del santo del pueblo, efectivamente,
no requera ms explicacin que la que
todo el mundo haba interiorizado con
la oscura naturalidad con la que se
aprenden las normas sociales en las
sociedades tradicionales. La urbanizacin nos alej del campo, de sus ritos
y tradiciones, de su anhelo de continuidad y regularidad. Someti el horario
y el calendario a criterios abstractos y
desnaturaliz el tiempo. Apareci as el

29

Mauerpark. Retratos. leo sobre lienzo. 30 x 24 cm. 2014

Mauerpark. Retratos.leo sobre lienzo 30 x 24 cm. 2014

Los primeros 40 de Sol. Desafo a la Junta Electoral, 20 de marzo de 2011. Juan Luis Snchez.
Publicado en eldirario.es. 14 de mayo de 2011
En la pgina siguiente:
Teen Spirit. leo sobre lienzo. 150 x 200 cm. 2014

Manifestacin. leo sobre lienzo. 120 x 162 cm. 2015

da de fiesta, tal y como hoy lo conocemos, que ya no se consagraba a honrar

a los dioses sino a huir de las ciudades
y pasar la jornada en los recodos del
Sena, sumidos en conversaciones intrascendentes con desconocidos con
los que haba que inventar una relacin
no basada en la comparticin de identidades ancestrales sino en la percepcin
de ligeras impresiones cambiantes.
Se haba inventado el dominguero,
uno de los temas favoritos de aquellos
pintores impresionistas que, en coherencia, tuvieron tambin que inventar
un modo de disgregar las pinceladas
para captar la precaria unidad de estas
nuevas impresiones y de sus sujetos. Y

32

as empezamos a interiorizar esa melanclica desercin de lo social una

vez que se suspende el engrudo de la
produccin y el consumo que percibimos la tarde de domingo, en el que
las calles se quedan desiertas porque
es fiesta. Y comienza a cobrar sentido
esa inquietante pregunta que se haca
Moneiba: qu hace la gente all?
No podemos comentar aqu ese proceso de privatizacin y atomizacin de
la experiencia del espacio que, probablemente, comenzara al mismo tiempo
que el capitalismo y la propia pintura
(como tal objeto mvil, desligado de la
arquitectura cultural, del muro y el techo
del templo y palacio; susceptible de ser

Sin ttulo. leo sobre lienzo. 46 x 61 cm. 2015

comprado, obviamente por burgueses,

amantes de la pintura de gnero). Esta
es, en todo caso, una de esas imgenes que todos podemos seguir entendiendo sin explicacin: todos los que
hemos experimentado, al montarnos
en el coche, que la inmensa mayora
del espacio pblico urbano se reserva a
un uso privado y rodado; todos los que
hemos pasado una tarde de domingo
ya no en el Sena sino en un Mall; los que
hemos pensado alguna vez que dejar a
nuestros hijos jugando en la calle poda
ser peligroso; los que hemos llevado
nuestros plsticos y latas al contenedor

34

pensando honestamente que la salvacin del planeta era una responsabilidad individual; todos los que nos hemos
indignado en solitario ante el telediario;
los que hemos dejado de sentirnos
integrantes de la clase trabajadora; los
que hemos aprendido a no tocarnos en
el transporte pblico Y todos los que
alguna vez pensamos que transformar
todo esto tena que ver con un proceso
de adquisicin individual de conciencia.
Pero todas estas mnadas sociales,
estas pinceladas sueltas, iguales en
su diferencia, gracias a la retrica de
la pintura, miradas desde una cierta

Sin ttulo. leo sobre lienzo. 130 x 145 cm. 2014 (detalle)

distancia, cobran cuerpo y sentido, se

convierten en un sujeto colectivo: la
multitud. Una masa que, de repente,
cobra conciencia poltica de que, bien
mirado, nuestros problemas personales
son, como afirma Moneiba Lemes, los
problemas que vivimos todos. Posiblemente esa distancia aglutinante nos la
tenga que proporcionar la emigracin,
la experiencia extrema del estar fuera
de lugar.
Multitud es la nocin que Spinoza
opone al exitoso concepto de pueblo con el que Hobbes somete a los
ciudadanos a una voluntad unificada y
cohesionada. Este viejo trmino de la
ciencia poltica ha sido recientemente
reivindicado por Antonio Negri y Paolo
Virno para tratar de atajar el problema
que ha dejado inerme a la izquierda
europea ante el imparable avance
neoliberal. Porque mientras la derecha
conserva su referente de clase slidamente aferrado al capital y un
objetivo definido la multiplicacin al
infinito y a cualquier coste de las posibilidades de reproducir ese capita, la

izquierda no ha encontrado imgenes

de sustitucin para el obrero fordista
tras la deslocalizacin de la fbrica y
la externalizacin de la produccin y
las clases medias productivas tras
la crisis de la mentalidad burguesa y
su creciente precarizacin. Dnde
podra encontrarse un sujeto histrico
capaz de oponer resistencia al imparable avance del capital? Sin duda se
contesta Negri, all donde se hallan
los beneficios y las rentas: en la metrpoli. La metrpoli es, sin duda, el lugar,
pero es algo ms que calles y plazas,
tambin es multitud: la red de actividad
social que conduce la energa del capitalismo cognitivo generando una riqueza ligada a los procesos de creacin
social de valor. La produccin industrial
se ha desmaterializado o deslocalizado en zonas perifricas, mientras el
plusvalor se genera ahora en el mbito
de las experiencias y las diferencias,
las relaciones y las influencias, los intercambios anotados de contenido y
saber, a costa de un trabajo eficiente
pero crecientemente disociado de la

35

renta y su distribucin. El capitalismo

requiere cada vez ms mano de obra,
ms gente que genere contenidos en
las redes sociales, que los difunda, los
filtre y los infiltre hasta el ms profundo
tejido de lo ntimo, y no solo a travs
de canales digitales sino tambin a
travs de esa red metropolitana de
encuentros en los que los cuerpos, en
su produccin de diferencia, funcionan
como correa de transmisin de envidias
y deseos, de obsolescencias programadas y modelos disciplinantes, de la
obsesin por la realizacin personal y la
disposicin a adaptarla al sistema que
nos oprime, de la mala conciencia por
la falta de integracin o de la disposicin a emprender inditas posibilidades
de autoexploracin. Pero, en su infinita
codicia, el capitalismo ha conseguido
disociar la distribucin de la renta de
este trabajo expandido del que se alimenta, y que le ayuda a colonizar hasta
el ltimo minuto de conciencia antes
del sueo y hasta el ltimo rincn de
nuestra afectividad y creatividad. Las
grandes corporaciones, que obtienen
sus copiosos beneficios de los rastros
que dejamos en nuestras bsquedas,
de la expansin de sus efectos entre
nuestros afectos, de nuestra gregaria
disposicin a exhibir pblica y obscenamente sus marcas o a mistificar sus
falsas promesas de felicidad, no dudan
en minimizar, hasta el lmite de poner
en peligro la propia reproduccin del
tejido donde medran, cualquier forma
de redistribucin de la riqueza.
La metrpolis es, pues, la red que
permite el flujo de actividad y valor, y
sustenta las formas de explotacin y
exclusin. Pero es, al mismo tiempo, el
espacio de la resistencia. El trnsito del
modelo de explotacin fordista (que ex-

traa la plusvala del tiempo de trabajo

del proletariado) al postfordista (que extrae la plusvala del tiempo de vida del
precariado) est plenamente consumado, pero su extraordinaria expansin ha
delegado en una multitud cada vez ms
incontrolable los propios instrumentos
disciplinantes, hasta confundirlos con
la misma vida social que exprimen.
Los espacios del antagonismo y la explotacin se solapan, como la realizacin humana y la esclavitud. El mismo
sistema que nos permite sobrepasar
las viejas fronteras aristotlicas entre
produccin, vida afectiva y poltica e
intelecto, que nos permite revincular el
trabajo con la creacin y la realizacin,
es tambin el que somete nuestras vidas a los paradigmas que las ponen en
riesgo. La vida metropolitana es el espacio de una renovada lucha de clases
y la multitud el nuevo agente social de
la resistencia y la explotacin, un indefinido conjunto de singularidades que
no puede representarse en trminos de
ciudadana (en el marco del estado nacin), ni de proletariado (en el marco de
un sistema de clases). Un cuerpo social
que se articula, como la celebracin de
Moneiba, en torno a un vaco, incluso
a un abismo. Pero (y aqu retornamos
a los planteamientos de la Escuela de
La Laguna) hay hoy algo ms pblico,
ms compartido, que esa sensacin de
precariedad, de falta de lugar?
Ese vaco es el que est colonizando
el capital. La patronal ya no compra el
trabajo que puede medirse en tiempo
cronolgico o potencia fsica, puja por
la existencia toda, lucha por controlar
este espacio ntimo en el que la vida
misma se hace capital y el capital se
hace vida. Y ello a travs del producto
estrella de la factora metropolitana del

Camuflaje. leo sobre lienzo. 27 x 41 cm. 2015

En la pgina anterior:
Sin ttulo. leo sobre lienzo. 80 x 49 cm. 2014
Revolucin. leo sobre lienzo. 77 x 51 cm. 2015

37

Sin ttulo. leo sobre lienzo. 120 x 162 cm. 2015 (detalle)

Mauerpark. Retratos. leo sobre lienzo. 30 x 24 cm.

2014
En la pgina siguiente:
Sin ttulo. leo sobre lienzo. 170 x 190 cm. 2014

38

capitalismo postfordista: la subjetividad. Con respecto a ella, la multitud

opera como productora y consumidora, como superconductora o como
resistencia. A veces re.productiva, a
veces antagonista, la multitud es cada
da ms cohesiva y, al mismo tiempo,
est ms disgregada. De ah que el
problema poltico se reduzca a cmo
representar ese flujo contradictorio de
expansin y contraccin que los cuadros de Moneiba traducen en problema
pictrico. Cmo darle unidad plstica
a un conjunto de manchas planas?,
cmo unificar en un sujeto poltico la
multitud preservando la diferencia de
las singularidades?, cmo favorecer
los dispositivos de discontinuidad y
dispersin que combaten la inercia
cohesiva de la que se retroalimenta el
capitalismo sin dispersar la capacidad
de resistencia poltica? En todo caso,
es ese un problema, como dira Beuys,
de configuracin. O, si se quiere, pictrico: cmo representar un sujeto
poltico capaz de llevar adelante la desmovilizada lucha de clases es decir,
la vieja aspiracin a que los beneficios

colaterales de la productividad y el rendimiento se extiendan al conjunto de

la sociedad de manera justa y a que la
ostentacin de la desigualdad deje de
funcionar como motor para la creatividad social. Porque estamos viviendo
las crisis financieras, fiscales, polticas
y laborales como expresiones coyunturales de desajustes tcnicos, cuando
no son ms que crisis ontolgicas de
la representacin abstracta del vivir
comn. El viejo problema que intuyeron
los pintores de la vida moderna cmo
representar la metrpolis, como fijar la
impresin que produce aquello que se
caracteriza por la disolucin de todo lo
slido; cmo representar la multitud,
esa masa de gente que se define en su
indefinicin ha adquirido hoy una actualidad y una novedad que ninguna de
las formas del modernismo fue capaz
de intuir.
De ah la importancia simblica y poltica del inters de Moneiba por pintar un nuevo pasaje constituyente, por
evolucionar de la pintura de gnero a la
de historia sin abandonar el problema
de las relaciones entre fondo y figura.

De hacerlo enfrentando las formas de

la abstraccin pues la definicin del
sujeto colectivo tiene tanto dimensiones fenomenolgicas como ontolgicas con las tensiones de contenido
social y poltico que atraviesa la metrpolis. Rebelarse es justo, pero no es
suficiente, afirma Negri (La metrpolis
es a la multitud lo que, antes, la fbrica era a la clase obrera, 2005). Lo
que est convirtindose en capital en
el proceso de colonizacin de la vida
en el post-fordismo globalizado es el
control de la representacin de la subjetividad en la metrpolis. O, dicho de
otra forma, la representacin de la metrpolis como el campo biopoltico en
el que la produccin de subjetividades
se vuelve antagonista, en la medida
en que ser antagnico significa declinar en mil maneras las posibilidades
concretas, biopolticas del ser. El
nico punto dbil del capital es que
depende de un acontecer social que
podemos representar como protesta,
como el escenario de una acumulacin irreductible de luchas mltiples.
En ese escenario, tener ideas y querer
formalizarlas, ese deseo de hacer que
podramos llamar genricamente arte,
puede tener enormes consecuencias
polticas antagonistas.
Como siempre en la pintura de Moneiba,
la figura parece librar una batalla con el
fondo para no diluirse en l. Si antes esa
pelea se viva con melancola, ahora aparece la algaraba. Los sujetos desubicados se han convertido en multitud. Y la
pintura de Moneiba lo celebra. Lo uno y lo
mltiple parecen coexistir: las imgenes
se generan como un mosaico de caras.
Pero como en las cmaras que tienen
habilitado el reconocimiento de rostros
en las fotografas de grupo, la necesi-

dad mecnica de enfocar se dispersa

y agota, y el objetivo solo encuentra un
cuerpo colectivo, una forma social. No
hay un pueblo que se preste dcil a ser
representado, hay rostros indefinidos,
porque pueden ser cualquiera, sumidos
en una marea humana. Una marea a la
que le hemos perdido el miedo desde
las pasadas elecciones: lo que siempre
se represent con inquietud la masa,
el populacho, la indefinicin, alienacin,
deshumanizacin hoy se representa
como fiesta. Desde la distancia vemos
la multitud, pero en la cercana solo
vemos confeti, una referencia ms o
menos cmica al puntillismo en la que
la erudicin historicista y la referencia
cientificista adquieren matices joviales. La fiesta de la pintura consiste
en reencontrarle sentido a esa forma
taquigrfica de representar la multitud
como condicin del sujeto contemporneo, de representar la democracia no
representativa, de celebrar una nueva
forma de hacer historia, en plural, una
historia sin nombre y sin fechas (no la
History sino la herstory), y de hacerlo
recordando, con una intertextualidad
carente de afectacin acadmica,
que este es el problema de la pintura
desde su origen moderno, que las superficies monocromas del modernismo
deben ponerse a ondear y convertirse
en banderas, las banderas de la comunidad de los que no tienen nada en comn. La fiesta de la pintura consiste en
reencontrarle sentido a un medio tosco
y renuente, como el chicle pisado, que
deconstruye todas sus ambiciones
polticas al poner, literalmente, en tela
de juicio sus propios mecanismos de
representar al colectivo. La pintura
est de fiesta: hay tantos problemas
simblicos como tcnicos.

En la pgina anterior:
Menschenmenge. leo sobre lienzo. 145 x 190 cm. 2014
En la pgina 43:
Sin ttulo. leo sobre lienzo. 30 x 30 cm. 2015.
Coleccin Alfredo Cabrera

41

42

Deshacer para
construir la imagen.
Los versos sueltos de
Moneiba Lemes
David Barro
No resultara difcil trazar una historia de
la pintura figurativa del siglo XX a partir de
la evolucin pictrica de Moneiba Lemes,
aunque seguramente tendramos que
contarla al revs. Una evolucin que podramos extender de Borremans a Velzquez, de la pintura lquida y lo que Jordan
Kandor denomin efecto Tuymans a los
valores extremos que propusieron algunos artistas impresionistas. Se tratara de
desdibujar la historia del mismo modo que
ella desdibuja al individuo a travs de distorsiones formales y cromticas. Porque
su obra es un desplazamiento del pasado

en el presente y viceversa, representando

contextos de colectividad donde no acertamos a distinguir si se trata de una escena
festiva, de una simple concentracin de
personas en actitud pasiva o de imgenes
y concentraciones de actualidad poltica.
Como reza el ttulo de esta exposicin, la
fiesta es para todos.
Moneiba Lemes construye eliminando
como si siguiese una lgica giacomettiana. En su obra cobra ms importancia
la temperatura emocional que el registro
metdico y su mirada, que se desliza
sobre la imagen, no nos permite dar
continuidad al relato, que se destila como
interrogante. Sus protagonistas pierden
presencia fsica y los motivos nitidez; las
lneas apuntan aunque en apariencia no
definen. Son imgenes que buscan un
punto de conexin, nunca un punto final.
Porque la imagen est en la mirada, que
no concluye, sino que se abre a interpretaciones, a posibilidades. El fondo potico
es innegable, como lo que es que detrs

En la pgina anterior:
La colina del parque. leo sobre lienzo.
24 x 30 cm.2014

45

Pasillo. leo sobre lienzo. 195 x 130 cm. 2009

46

de una apariencia frgil se esconde una

factura medida y rigurosa. Porque una caracterstica invariable en su trayectoria es
que su mirada siempre es hmeda, nunca
es seca. Todo es conocido pero se destila
misterioso. Es una realidad que respira.
Algo est sucediendo o est a punto de
suceder y algo acontece tambin en el
interior de la imagen. Cada pintura es
un verso suelto, aunque cercano a sus
otras pinturas.
Hablamos de pintura como distanciamiento, ya que la realidad se vela en
tanto que la informacin se nos omite. La
imagen se deconstruye por condensacin, se difumina. El espacio se llena de
murmullos. Moneiba Lemes asume logros
de la historia del arte y abraza la extraa
autonoma de la pincelada impresionista
o las masas de color de Czanne para
destilar sus escenas, derivando la imagen
de una forma no muy diferente a cundo
Mondrian esquematiza el paisaje para
destilarlo en abstraccin geomtrica. Es
por tanto una figuracin metafrica, la de
un mundo que se derrumba, que se borra,
que se apaga en su confusin. Algo as
como la imagen que permanece cuando
cerramos los ojos, hasta que se desvanece. La materia se desmaterializa, como
en la escultura de Medardo Rosso, pero
sobre todo el individuo, que se convierte
en masa informe.
La de Moneiba Lemes no se trata de una
pintura heroica ni efectista. Al contrario,
huye de lo esttico y sus imgenes semejan escaparse, como si siempre estuviesen
a punto de irse. El campo visual, reducido,
dificulta la aprehensin de la imagen, nos
obliga a trabajar las distancias, los modos
de acercarse a una pintura. Es evidente
que conoce el devenir de la pintura y que
trabaja consciente de ese legado. Siendo
este un acercamiento primero hacia su

pintura, me aventuro a pensar, aunque no

me preocupara equivocarme, que Moneiba Lemes asume lo que Luc Tuymans filtra
de Gerhard Richter, esa manera cruda de
ilustrar que heredaron tambin destacados artistas como Marlene Dumas, Wilhelm Sasnal, Eberhard Havekost, Magnus
von Plessen o Ren Danils. Todos ellos
trabajaron la reduccin de la imagen para
acabar representando lo irrepresentable.
Tuymans lo plante desde una premisa
paradjica: la permanencia de la imagen
esttica en la memoria es ms fuerte que
la de la imagen mvil; la imposibilidad de
recuperar esa imagen, su finitud y desvanecimiento, acumula significados que
desarrollan su equivalente mental, que s
permanecer, y cada vez ms, en movimiento. Y en ese estado estn las masas
de gente de Moneiba Lemes, asumiendo
la densidad resultante de ese proceso, la
durabilidad de la imagen. As, sus Baistas, turistas y otros entes flotantes, que se
plantean borrosos, disimulando y escondiendo la habilidad de pintar bien. Pienso
en Michal Borremans y Vija Celmins, y en
cmo Delfim Sardo los compara diciendo
que toda su pintura est dominada por
dos factores sofocantes: la enorme eficiencia pictrica que raya el efectivo virtuosismo con toda su carga peyorativa
y conservadora que, en la tradicin de las
vanguardias, la maestra de la mano transporta, y una corporalidad desviante,
extraa e inconfortable, presente en los
cuerpos truncados, en los gestos intiles
y en el tono dislocado de los personajes
que pueblan sus pinturas. Como en estos dos artistas Moneiba Lemes deja en
suspenso el significado, dibujando un velo
que acta como muro, como distancia
temporal, como contratiempo espacial.
La realidad se difumina y se pierde al tiempo que se reconstruye, que se representa.

Chinatown. leo sobre lienzo. 90 x 100 cm. 2009

Sn ttulo. leo sobre lienzo. 38 x 46 cm. 2007

Lo ambiguo de la pintura y lo literal de la

imagen fotogrfica se equilibran y el misterio de lo borroso, algo que nos llega
desde Velzquez o Leonardo espolea
nuestros sentidos.
Al fin y al cabo, no pocos autores han
hablado del enigma de la indefinicin en
la ubicacin de los monarcas en el lienzo
de las Meninas de Velzquez como un
dilogo entre el autor y el espectador; un
lugar donde el mismo y el otro puedan
encontrarse cmodamente. Y en ese nolugar, en la zona borgiana en la que se

registra el deslizamiento entre lo real y la

ficcin, es donde Moneiba Lemes sita su
obra, en un lugar sin lugar. Son imgenes
existentes, proyectadas de una realidad
que no es nunca la imagen de lo real, sino
la mirada transversal de quien la observa,
el instante de un presente que flota en la
memoria. Porque la mirada de Moneiba
Lemes es una mirada tensa, propia de
quien trabajando el defecto de la imagen.
Su viaje es del encuentro. Diferente pero
al mismo tiempo cercano al mundo sin
salidas de Hopper. Una multitud de figu-

47

Baistas, turistas y otros entes flotantes. Espacio expositivo Chafiras. Tenerife 2011

Mauerpark. leo sobre lienzo.40 x 55 cm. 2013

Reunin en Mauerpark. leo sobre lienzo. 190 x 250 cm. 2015

Sn ttulo. leo sobre lienzo. 115 x 195 cm. 2015

Sn ttulo. leo sobre lienzo. 130 x 145 cm. 2014

52

ras solitarias en su multitud, sin certezas,

sin atributos. La realidad se disuelve en su
representacin, se desenfoca. Es la realidad en fuga, huidiza. Antes ahogada en
sus tonos grises, sobria, ahora cromticamente tensa, de pincelada singularizada,
autnoma, segmentada.
Jordan Kantor, en su famoso artculo El
efecto Tuymans publicado en Artforum en
2004, nos habla de Sasnal y lo aparenta
con Tuymans, hablando del papel protagonista que dejan a la tinta. Para ellos, hay
un tipo especfico de taquigrafa figurativa
que preside todo: un grupo de pinceladas
irregulares pueden significar el rostro, en
tanto que unas manchas abstractas, casi
sin forma, son ledas como manos. En
principio esa taquigrafa pictrica puede
ser explicada como una simple consecuencia del hecho de trabajar a partir de
fotografas, que por s solas reducen una
escena tridimensional a una constelacin
plana de formas oscuras y claras. No obstante, divorciando el toque de la tinta de la
tarea mimtica en s y desvalorizando la
propia idea de pericia tcnica al destacar
la pincelada desarreglada Tuymans
apunt nuevas formas de trabajar con
fuentes fotogrficas no basadas en nociones ultrapasadas o ideolgicamente
comprometidas de aptitud y talento .
Lo que se esconde detrs del trabajo
de Moneiba Lemes es una crtica social,
velada pero suficientemente clara. La confusin y la angustia que supone la masa
es directamente proporcional a la insignificancia de ser uno ms. Pienso que las
obras de Moneiba Lemes bien pudieran
ilustrar algunos de los relatos de Papini,
que escribi lo siguiente: Imaginen que
todo el mundo se detuviese de improviso,
en un instante dado, y que todas las cosas permanecieran en el sitio en que estaban y que todos los hombres se volvieran

inmviles, como estatuas, en la actitud en

que estaban en ese instante, en la accin
que se hallaban ejecutando... Si esto ocurriera y si a pesar de todo ello continuara
todava funcionando en los hombres el
pensamiento, y pudieran recordar y juzgar
lo que hicieron y lo que estaban haciendo,
y pudieran examinar todo lo que realizaron
desde su nacimiento y meditar en lo que
deseaban realizar antes de morir, imagnense cunta desesperacin ardera bajo
el trgico silencio de ese mundo detenido
de improviso!. Las pinturas de Moneiba
Lemes, esas abstracciones de sus rostros
y cuerpos a modo de pinceladas son algo
as como estrangular el deseo de acceder
a la imagen. Dira que esas imgenes no
tienen principio ni fin, conflicto sobre el que
profundiza de manera afortunada John
Berger, que diferencia entre la fotografa
documento del pasado y la pintura
profeca recibida del pasado acerca de
lo que el espectador ve al situarse ante la
pintura en ese momento. Es la imagen
visual como comentario de una ausencia,
como ausencia de lo que se describe. Por
eso nos atrapan como a la muchedumbre, en una suerte de callejn sin salida.
Como la sensacin exasperante de esos
hombres que Papini contiene en su propio
tiempo. Todos entendemos algunos de
nuestros instantes vividos como instantes
decisivos y sucesivos, como suerte de
algo que vendr. La vida se arma de sueos e ideales, de proyectos, y en palabras
de Papini, todo su presente est hecho
de pensamientos en torno a su futuro.
Por eso en su huidizo espejo Papini deja
ms palabras que, insisto, semejan empatizar con estas pinturas: Todo lo que es,
lo que est presente, nos parece oscuro,
mezquino, insuficiente, inferior, y nosotros
nos consolamos solamente pensando que
todo este presente no es sino un prlogo, un

Camuflaje. leo sobre lienzo. 190 x 300 cm. 2014

Menschenmenge. leo sobre lienzo. 150 x 185 cm.

2014 (detalle)

largo y aburrido prlogo, a la hermosa novela

del porvenir. Todos los hombres, lo sepan o
no, viven gracias a esta fe. Si de pronto se les
dijese que dentro de una hora todos morirn,
todo lo que hacen y lo que hicieron no tendra
para ellos ningn placer ni sabor ni valor alguno. Sin el espejo del futuro la realidad actual
parecera torpe, sucia, insignificante.
La de Moneiba Lemes es una pintura concentrada. Capaz de encomendarse a lo sublime. Todo convive en tensin, calma pero
intensa. Por eso deja tantas cosas fuera de
la imagen. Pienso en la bruma que cada vez
se hace ms densa y presente en la obra
de Friedrich y que se har insoportable en
los ltimos trabajos de Turner. No estamos
tan lejos. Friedrich seala cmo el ojo y la
imaginacin se sienten generalmente ms
atrados por lo vaporoso y lejano que por lo
que se ofrece prximo y claro a la mirada.
Ese abismo blanco, ese abismo horizontal,
se manifiesta en las multitudes coloreadas
de Moneiba Lemes, que lleva lo pictrico
de la escena a una situacin lmite. Siempre
habr algo que se nos escape. Se genera
una situacin especular. Porque tampoco
andamos lejos de cuando Monet persigue la

disolucin de los motivos en sus cuadros de

ninfeas, donde resulta imposible de discernir
lo que son propiamente las plantas que flotan y los reflejos. En las obras de Moneiba
Lemes tambin desaparece el horizonte y el
espacio no acaba de definirse. Lo interesante
de Monet es cmo a medida que se adentra
en el estanque por l construido y que tan
bien conoce las referencias van despareciendo. Todo es agua y el impresionismo
declina expresionismo abstracto antes de
tiempo; no sabemos que es realidad y qu
es reflejo, seguramente porque todo es realidad y todo es reflejo de algo dado.
La pintura de Moneiba Lemes nos habla
tanto de lo que nos rodea como de lo que
nos habita. En otras palabras, ms una huella
de la realidad se proyecta como una manera
de ver. La dimensin es pictrica; el espacio
intermedio. No se trata de mirar la imagen,
sino a travs de ella. Algo as como aquello
que deca Godard de que no se trata de una
reflexin de la realidad sino de la realidad
que resulta de una reflexin. En la pintura de
Moneiba Lemes no importa qu se mira sino
cmo es esa mirada.

En la pgina 55:
Mtodo. leo sobre lienzo. 40 x 40 cm. 2015

53

54

LA FIESTA ES PARA TODOS:

UNA CONVERSACIN CON
MONEIBA LEMES1
Jos Otero

Jos Otero: Antes de entrar a hablar de

tu trabajo, no quisiera dejar de hacerte
una escueta semblanza personal. Naces
en Mcher, un bello pueblo agrcola de
Lanzarote, tomas contacto con la pintura
a travs de un profesor particular, estudias
en la Escuela de Arte de Arrecife y posteriormente en la Facultad de Bellas Artes
de La Laguna. Vives en Braunschweig
(Alemania) y Barcelona por poco tiempo,
te mudas a Berln tres aos y regresas a
Canarias hace unos pocos meses. Tu trayectoria parece confirmar que los artistas
contemporneos canarios, y no solo los

jvenes, necesitan tener un pie fuera del

Archipilago.
Moneiba Lemes: Sin entrar a comentar
la deprimente situacin que vive Espaa,
en donde la emigracin de la gente joven
sigue alcanzando niveles de rcord, me
march a Berln porque me encontraba
un poco asfixiada en el contexto artstico
canario. Berln, adems de ser un punto
de referencia del arte menos comercial en
Europa, era una gran ciudad relativamente
barata. Tena algunos amigos all que me
animaron a ir. Pero Berln ha cambiado
mucho en los ltimos aos. T lo sabes
mejor, que llevabas casi diez aos cuando
llegu.

En la pgina anterior:
Sin ttulo. leo sobre lienzo. 120 x 162 cm. 2015

J. O. : Hblame un poco ms de esa

relacin asfixiante con Canarias. A pesar
de compartir contigo esa sensacin, creo
que asfixia no es la palabra correcta.
Despus de todo, aqu se crea (y se vive)

1. Para ser honestos con el lector, Moneiba Lemes

y un servidor confesamos mantener una relacin
de pareja desde hace algunos aos. Es interesante, asimismo, poner en conocimiento que quien les
escribe tambin es pintor. Ustedes deciden ahora si
importa el color del cristal con el que se mira.

57

bien. Quien ha estado fuera algunos

aos lo sabe. Hay algunas comunidades
autnomas espaolas y tambin amplias
regiones en centroeuropa que en comparacin con Canarias son un yermo cultural.
No creo exagerar ni ser chovinista.
M. L. : Vayamos por partes. Por un lado,
en mi generacin, que estuvo anclada al
ambiente postuniversitario, existi un desencanto generalizado que tuvo y tiene que
ver con las dificultades para materializar y
hacer visible fuera del reducido circuito
profesional el trabajo que se estaba haciendo. En ese sentido Canarias es, por
decirlo as, un hervidero de ideas, pero
de ideas estancadas. Por otro lado, el
emigrar puede responder tambin a algo
en principio contradictorio: ms que para
conectarse con otra escena artstica, una
se va para desconectarse de todo. En el
pequeo universo cultural ultraperifrico
de Canarias se est muy pendiente de
lo que los compaeros y otra gente del
sector hace, no? Eso es bueno desde
el punto de vista profesional y ms an,
del humano, porque se genera respeto y
cario por los colegas, pero a veces esto
crea inercias incmodas.
J. O. : S, hemos hablado en muchas
ocasiones de ese aislamiento inverso.
Uno desea en determinados periodos
sentirse ignorado para producir en entera libertad, y necesita de ese contexto
ciudadano ms grande, en donde no le
importas a nadie, ese anonimato. Esa
fue, al menos, mi experiencia cuando me
march a Berln en 2003. Este impulso
se parece menos a aquella emigracin de
artistas canarios durante el franquismo y
postfranquismo, en donde se hua del
desierto cultural para conectar con la
metrpoli, que simplemente marcharse
del hogar familiar, en donde los padres

(lase toda la institucin cultural) te mantienen demasiado a gusto.

M. L. : De este mito vive mucha gente del
sector, en especial los peridicos, que nos
ponen rpido a triunfar fuera aunque la
cosa sea una expo en una cafetera berlinesa o londinense. Cuando particip en la
Bienal de Padru, que no es precisamente
una de las ms destacadas en el panorama mundial, algn peridico seal: Artistas canarios triunfan en el extranjero.
En cualquier caso, se est donde se est,
yo entiendo el arte como una actividad
subjetiva. No en el sentido de subjetividad
introspectiva ni mucho menos, sino como
accin del sujeto y como relaciones entre
sujetos.

Teen spirit. leo sobre lienzo. 150 x 200 cm.

2014 (detalle)
En la pgina anterior:
Derrumbamiento. leo sobre lienzo. 175 x 190 cm.
2014

J. O. : Intersubjetividad.
M. L. : Odio esa palabra, pero s. Me
gusta el arte que hacen las personas
que conozco, ya sea aqu, en Berln o en
Nuakchot (Mauritania), en donde tuve una
hermosa experiencia con artistas de aquella comunidad. Prefiero formar parte activa
de la programacin de alguna sala local
o comentar las ltimas piezas de algn
conocido o amigo que estar al tanto de la
ltima de Olafur Eliasson en Nueva York.
Es extrao vivir el arte si no se permanece
cerca de las obras y de los artistas. Como
artista o persona implicada me cuesta ser
una mera espectadora.
J. O. : En tu trayectoria pictrica hay dos
pocas diferenciadas, un primer periodo
gris, por decirlo as, y la produccin de
los dos ltimos aos, que es el grueso de
esta exposicin. Antes de entrar a hablar
en especfico sobre ellas, recuerdas
qu libros has mantenido ms tiempo en
la cabecera de la cama durante las dos
pocas?

59

Sin ttulo. leo sobre lienzo. 162 x 195 cm. 2015

M. L. : En 2013 empec a estudiar Filosofa por la UNED. Ya sabes la pila de libros

que se me amonton. Dej los estudios
por falta de tiempo y ahora puedo leer con
ms calma, aunque renunciando lamentablemente al rigor investigador. Durante
la poca de los cuadros grises, estuve
interesada en Zygmunt Bauman. Bauman
puede llegar a parecer de entrada uno
de esos socilogos-marca que acua un
concepto y lo repite hasta la saciedad para
explicar cualquier cuestin (la cosa lquida suya) pero es un pensador de fondo
con una visin completa, sobre todo, del
mundo que se nos viene encima. Siempre
que me intereso por determinados textos
he procurado traducirlos al lenguaje de
la pintura sin hacer ilustraciones literales.
La pintura de esta poca gris es pobre,
inestable, precaria, fluida, lquida, etc.
no pretende ponerle cara a esas ideas,
ni explicarlas, ni plantear tesis de trabajo
como leemos en los statement de artista.
Aquella poca fue una lucha pictrica porque la figura no se diluyese en el fondo; en
nuestra sociedad, la pelea sigue siendo la
misma.

una manera muy honesta de tratar el arte.

Empieza desde poquito y remonta el vuelo
bien alto, pero desde la percepcin del
pintor hacia la del filsofo, y no al revs.
Hay pocos textos as, sobre el pintar-pensar, que no sean meras investigaciones
histricas o sociales. Me interesan muchsimo los textos de algunos pintores; Klee,
Czanne, Van Gogh, Bacon, Tuymans,
etc.

J. O. : Estoy bastante cansado de los

artistas que hablan de su tema. Esa idea
de exponer sin ilustrar, de hacer contenido sin glosar el contenido, me parece
muy valiosa y a reivindicar. Curiosamente,
parece que las cuestiones sociales entran
ahora en tu pintura

M. L. : Hay un ao en el que se pone

en crisis mi forma de pintar y tambin me
cuesta encontrar motivos a representar.
Y cuando una no sabe qu cosa pintar,
lo primero que hace es retratar lo que ve
en el estudio, los cacharros de pintura, los
botes, los pinceles, etc. Estuve pintando
una serie de paos de pintor, naturalmente llenos de manchas y acartonados.
Cuando trat de imitar esas manchas con
colores vivos (hasta ahora ausentes en mi
trabajo), al mismo tiempo que dibujaba
los patrones decorativos que estos paos
suelen tener, aprend a resolverlos con una
tcnica que me permiti ms tarde hacer
aparecer esas masas de color/masas de
personas en otros lienzos.

M. L. : S, pero de nuevo gracias al puro

desarrollo pictrico. Es el momento en el
que le presto (le prestamos) mucha atencin a Pintura: el Concepto de Diagrama2
de Deleuze, una transcripcin de conferencias en donde el objetivo principal es
saber si la pintura tiene algo que decirle
a la filosofa. Es una reconstruccin del
pensar pegada a la forma, a la imagen,

J. O. : Me has hablado alguna vez de que

tu segunda etapa creativa viene marcada
por una decisin de poner en crisis tu
pintura, de forzar una mquina que, de
natural, hubiera seguido funcionando.

Sin ttulo. leo sobre lienzo. 89 x 114 cm. 2015.

Coleccin Navarro y Hernndez

M. L. : S, de hecho estuve casi un ao

forcejeando. Y perdiendo. Tengo muy pocos cuadros de ese periodo.
J. O. : Cul es el cuadro o los cuadros
del cambio? Desde la perspectiva del libro
de Deleuze, que es siempre muy especfico, muy figurativo, me gustara saber
exactamente qu gestos, qu pinceladas
diste para forzar con xito el trabajo.

Sin ttulo. leo sobre lienzo. 24 x 30 cm. 2014

2. Deleuze, Gilles. Pintura: el Concepto de Diagrama

Editorial Cactus. Buenos Aires. 2008.

61

Exposicin La fiesta es para todos, Sala de Arte Contemporneo. Tenerife. 2014

Manifestacin. leo sobre lienzo. 115 x 162 cm. 2015

J. O. : Esto me recuerda lo estril que

resulta anclar la pertinencia de las obras
de arte solo a la forma o al contenido,
como si fuesen elementos disgregados,
fcilmente separables. Ambas cosas se
dan a la vez.
M. L. : Yo me considero, de todas maneras, una pintora del cmo se hace. Eso
no significa que no me importe el qu
pinto. Pero es verdad que si no hubiese
credo en ese momento que retratar masas de personas era importante, no lo
hubiera hecho. Pintando se encuentran
constantemente soluciones formales para
muchas cosas, pero si una, por ejemplo,
ha encontrado un buen recurso para pintar rboles y no quiere pintar rboles, se
entiende que la eleccin del tema a tratar
es fundamental.

masas que la conforman, masas de pintura/masas de personas. Ahora, la figura y

el fondo son parte de lo mismo. La pintura
se ha aplanado.
J. O. : Tiene que ver esto con un viraje
hacia aquella idea finalista de la pintura
plana sobre la que teorizaba Clement
Greenberg?

J. O. : En este sentido, hay un motivo

que permanece en tus dos perodos y que
me resulta esclarecedor desde un punto
de vista interpretativo amplio, formal y de
contenido: los stage diving o saltos desde
el escenario. Aqu hay una clara voluntad
de, como decas antes, forzar la disolucin de la figura en el fondo. Es como si la
resolucin de aquel conflicto de la figura y
el fondo tuviese su correlato natural en el
conflicto social, con esas masas de personas, en diferentes actitudes. As es fcil
suponer que las masas, las reuniones, las
banderas, las gentes en los parques responden a la situacin poltica y social que
vive Espaa, bastante ms movidita que
hace unos aos, los aos grises.

M. L. : Por lo que s, esta lnea de pensamiento ve en esa planitud una suerte de

estado puro de la pintura. A m eso no me
interesa. Yo no creo en la evolucin en el
arte sino en la adecuacin de ste a su
momento histrico. Si la figura y el fondo
se funden es quizs porque, por una vez,
parece que ambas dimensiones se complementan y se entienden, la figura ha
dejado de tenerle miedo al fondo. Ahora
el conflicto es otro. Me obsesiona darle
direccin a las masas. En los cuadros de
masas, incluso en los ms abstractos hay
como una direccin de las pinceladas.
Trato de hacer una suerte de centrifugado, de torbellino con la composicin en
general, busco un movimiento. Deleuze
hablaba de esto: El pintor parte de una
idea-tpico, la pinta creando una especie
de masa en el lienzo, buscando su forma,
y ah, en ese montn de colores, en esa
capa de leo sobajeado o barrizal, surge
la idea pero sin el carcter preconcebido
del tpico. Esa sera la nueva figura, la
masa en movimiento, ese sera, otra vez
con Deleuze, el hecho pictrico; lo que
nace del procedimiento y no de la simple
decisin de plasmar algo en una tela.

M. L. : S, esa forma de entender el trabajo era algo que quera dejar intuir desde
el principio con el ttulo de la exposicin
La fiesta es para todos. Esa fiesta de la
pintura es para todos, para las mismas

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, mayo, 2015

Stage Diving. leo sobre lienzo. 120 x 150 cm. 2014

Del escenario a la masa. leo sobre lienzo.

38 x 63 cm. 2014

65

66

ENGLISH TEXTS

Taller en Berln. 2014 / Artists Studio. Berlin. 2014

Can We Paint?
Ramn Salas

Moneiba Lemes might be a young artist

but she already has a considerable track
record to her credit. Long before graduating she had already exhibited her prematurely mature work in some of the Canary
Islands main galleries. In fact, one could
often hear her generation (Ral Artles,
Mara Laura Benavente, Javier Corzo,
Nestor Delgado, David Ferrer, Rayco
Mrquez, Adrin Martnez, Damin Rodriguez, Arstides Santana, Noelia Villena)
referred to as the Moneibos, a roster
of artists who had trained at a School of
Fine Arts in a process of transition. They

comprised the pilot group that would later give rise to Transdisciplinary Projects,
a response from the school to the repeatedly voiced criticism of the hypothetical
predominant role given to painting in its
curriculum. In truth, the Moneibos also
coincided with a large part of the cohort
known as the School of La Laguna (Alby
lamo, Francisco Castro, Pipo Hernndez, Martn y Sicilia, Ubay Murillo, Jos
Otero) in the frequent use of painting,
though now mixing the discipline, even
more openly and recurrently, with other
working processes.
Moneibas painting had a lot of affinities
with her predecessors. And quite a few
differences too. Like theirs, hers could also
be considered genre painting in which her
surrounding environs, when not her private world, was co-opted as both ground
and as figure. This was by no means due
to shortsightedness, if anything quite the

69

opposite. Her endeavour to define subjectivities in a morally minimalist milieu had

outstripped the Situationist relationship
between the personal and the political in
which one could have placed not just Hopper but also Hammershi, Chardin and
Vermeer. This not only interpolated the
frequently naturalised issue of identity in
an intertextual context that now underscored its narrative nature (and the very
crisis of narrativity), but it also enabled
them to forge bonds between situations
of subjectivity and the bourgeoisie. The
problem with (the loss of) identity had too
often been displaced towards the territory
of subalternity and the vernacular, when in
fact it was the urban middle classes who
felt increasingly more threatened and out
of place. These artists members of a
class, the painting class, in danger of
extinction address their work from within their physically and affectively close
circles, convinced that what is happening
to them personally was simply what was
happening. And what was happening, far
from striking them as anecdotal or personal, had significant historical and political
resonances that can surely be traced from
the simultaneous birth of painting and
of the bourgeoisie in the mid-sixteenth
century to the corruption of character in
post-Fordism.
Theirs was the first generation of Canarian
artists in almost a century that did not
take the Canary Islands as their subject
matter, in other words, that did not inherit
a defined and defining legacy. But neither
did they simply accept the imposition of
metropolitan styles. They were islander
artists, in short, they were accustomed to
working in an environs that was informed
about and distant from its referents in
equal measure, and under the scrutiny of
a small close-knit circle. They did not inhe-

70

rit local referents and yet they were embarrassed to fling themselves headlong into
the arms of international trends. I imagine
that when one lives in the metropolis there
are very few opportunities to swim against
the all-powerful and seductive stream; but
living on an island means that the decision
to swim along with the current is no more
than that, a decision, because the current
does not in fact pass anywhere near, it
does not sweep us along. And swimming
with the current, when you are not really
in it, is embarrassing, especially when you
share a studio where everybody can see
the catalogue you have on your table. I
imagine that this is where the odd, persistent leaning towards anachronism comes
from, a resistance to being just carried
along. I also imagine that this is where the
(strange) decision to paint comes from.
And that is, unquestionably, the defining
characteristic of the School of La Laguna,
shared with colleagues that, like Lecuona
and Hernndez or Prez and Requena,
do not literally practice painting (despite
the fact that painting is a recurrent theme
in their creative process): for them, being
an artist is a (clearly conceptual) decision
that called upon them to create images far
removed from the original sources of meaning and from the visual noise of the society of the spectacle and the mainstream.
Therefore, it is an unpremeditated decision
that forces them to look for a meaning for
something that has none. And that is why
they are able to paint; because painting
can no longer be practiced other than
from a metapainterly stance, rethinking its
own irrelevance. That is why their painting
took on a clearly neo-baroque bias, why
they spoke about painting, but not about
an autonomous language, about meaningful matter or about defining flatness: they
spoke of the studio, of their environs, of

the conceptual act and the commitment

of painting. Despite their cordial relationships with many eighties artists, especially with Dokoupil, they never fell back
on the recourse of self-legitimisation of
painting in romantic terms: as an outlet
for expressiveness, passion, carnality,
genius so long repressed by the cool
self-absorption of conceptualism and
late-modernism. They decided to opt for
painting not because it was the obvious
choice but precisely because it was so
questionable. Naturally this decision caused many doubts and uncertainties. Yet it
turned out to be a coherent choice, given
that they opted precisely to address the
issue of uncertainty. This uncertainty was a
signature feature of the generation but one
they experimented with individually, each
one on his or her own, each one taking
a path eschewing any epic Situationist
drift: flneurs behind the scenes, strollers
on their own detours, they had nothing
more (nor nothing less) to recount than the
story of a generation that had inherited the
custom of telling stories, of practicing bio.
graphy, of trying to give narrative body to
their lives, but whose lot it was to live in a
milieu dominated by opportunism, improvisation, meaninglessness, incoherence,
adaptability
Despite its penchant for bad painting,
indebted to its interest in underscoring
the conceptual choice of the medium
at the expense of disciplinary qualities,
the School of La Laguna always lent a
major focus to the underlying drawing.
The uncertainty of its figures does not
imply non-definition: they inhabit their
transitional spaces with a solid geometry that by analogy with Oramas,
Ismael, Dominguez, Fleitas, Gregorio
and Millares we could consider to be
Canarian. Liquidness, made so fashio-

nable by Bauman, would prove to be the

major contribution of the Moneibos.
The uncertainty of a generation which is
conscious of living in a story that does
not include them, that makes no room
for them in the meaninglessness, ultimately broke them up. Like the joke about a
drunk who is seeing double who says to
another: stop drinking, youre beginning to blur, this generation started
to feel that the drunkenness of its ruling
classes, that had put them in a bubble,
began to blur them too. The absolute
perplexity of their slightly older colleagues (who lived in a world in which they
had no place but which nevertheless still
offered them apparently solid though
essentially illicit opportunities) took on
a more subtle, more melancholic, more
poetic tone in Moneibas painting. Her
bathers, tourists and other floating
bodies discarded the monumental
consistency of Ubay Murillo. The stage
setting is now a simple atmosphere and
the hotel rooms are more a lingering reminder or a ghost than a theme park. In
Moneibas work Jos Oteros dumb objects have been transformed into a kind
of murmur, when not an after-image on
the retina. The narrativity of Alby lamos
anecdotes and micro-stories became, in
Moneibas scenes, an increasingly more
tenuous thread, as if the stories never
manage to be fully tuned in. Tuymans
had liquidated Hopper. It seemed as
if the characters in search of an author
had lost all hope of finding a script that
would justify their entity as a figure and
opted instead for blending in with the
ground, safeguarding the only thing that
seemed to be unquestionable in a world
in which realism is built on bubbles: the
expediency of suspending the obsession with capturing the real and instead

71

lingering on the poetic subtleties offered

by its insubstantiality.
In a few years, one could almost say
months, the critical imaginary of the Canaries had changed utterly. Beforehand,
the consciousness that everything (morally) solid was vanishing into post-Fordist thin air was paradoxically rendered
in massive rows of cement. Suddenly,
the landscape was turned into ruins. Im
not sure about the connection, but on
15 September 2008, the day Lehman
Brothers filed for bankruptcy, Moneibas
pictures were hanging in the first edition
of 25 ft., the exhibition that served as
the presentation of the Moneibos in
society. It is no surprise that melancholia
became the general tonic that took on
late-modern overtones. And not because it demanded the disciplinary purity of
painting as a space for transcendental
autonomy as opposed to a strategic
art, but because it demonstrated a sensibility towards the ineffable. Moneiba
Lemes was possibly the most gifted
painter (in the sense insiders give to someone with the knack) of the 25 ft.
generation, but she never flaunted her
talent nor took pleasure in its fluidity. In
fact, it always seemed to stop short of
starting to paint. Her only touch of pride
consisted in refusing to lend brilliance
or a solid appearance to a world she
perceived to be dissolving. Her work
was never anecdotal (unlike not only
the School of La Laguna but also the
immense majority of postmodern art),
and could be situated precisely in that
space of resistance, between things and
their image, that turned out to be a poor
conduit for depiction, as if it wanted to
delay the advent of meaning, confuse
the interpretation, suspend the desire
for recognition in order to cultivate the
charm of the ungraspable, of small subli-

72

mities that remain beyond the reason of

justifying ends. Moneiba had abandoned
prose in order to practice poetry, the
function of language that lingers on meaning. Though, to be more exact, hers
was a kind of prose poetry: the remains
of the anecdote were increasingly more
irrelevant, though she did keep her feet
firmly on the ground. The gravitational
force of intimacy, the chronotopes of
friendship, those space-times in which
politics is distilled in the local, always
afford her work a ground for dialogue.
Perhaps for this reason, even now when
she has solo shows, Moneiba is a painter of group exhibitions. I, for one, am
unable to disconnect her work from its
setting, to ignore the echoes of a crowd
that is her closest circle.
Was there a certain, more or less aestheticising complacency in the description of
a liquid world? Was the work of Moneiba,
of Ral, of Adrin, or Nstor or of Corzo
an attempt to learn how to float in a liquid
medium? Was the work of David, of Laura,
of Rayco, of Noelia, of Arstides or of Damin a vaccine against a sinister world?
Or are these questions just a symptom of
the drift towards Manichaeism in contemporary art, which has sold for the price of a
bowl of lentils of tranquilizing radicalness,
the revolutionary potential of uncertainty,
of an attempt to inoculate the interlocutor
against the contingent attitude that had
been used in creating the image? The
world had turned materialist, all values
were converted to GDP and even critical
powers wanted to float their value on the
stock exchange of efficacy. Some people
refused to admit that the alleged tangibility
of their profits was grounded in the most
abstract (would could say abstruse) structure of financial games, while it appeared
that others did not understand that any
transformation of the system would requi-

re a symbolic struggle against its hyperrealism. And, overnight, the solidness of

the world economy caved in like a house
of cards. The composure with which
thousands of workers got themselves into
debt for the rest of their lives collapsed.
Competitive professionals were tossed
out of the system. The following morning,
they looked at another face in the mirror.
Nothing under their own control had failed,
but neither had they time to finish paying
for the sports car. They found themselves
living back at home with their parents,
even without realising that they had used
it as collateral. As the bubbles got bigger,
the composure and the cement started to
crack. What then was reality? How could
it be depicted? Was Moneibas out-offocusness premonitory?
Under these circumstances, it would
seem evident that responding to the system demanded tactics and strategy, but
also a change in systems of depiction.
Despite being employed heavy-handedly
in some opportunist exhibition events, the
15-M movement did have an aesthetic
dimension. That campsite, which gave an
unexpected symbolic meaning to being
exposed to the elements, espoused not
just another way of living, but also the
need to depict it another way.

To my way of thinking, the painting Celebracin contains a completely new component, a new method that diverges from
my prior practice. In it, the main group
portrayed is relegated to the background,
looking on as a couple of children dance
in the centre of the painting, otherwise
largely empty. We have no idea about the
reason for this get-together: What are they
celebrating? What are they doing there?
Further images of celebrations and gathe-

rings which in fact make up the bulk of

this exhibition are organised following
this same compositional model, without a
central motif. Figure is turned into ground
and the subject becomes part of a mass.
Painting is expanded and at once flattened; its a painting party. (Moneiba Lemes)

I agree with Moneiba with regards the

novel quality of Celebracin, but I am not
sure whether I agree on the reasons. It is
true that up until this moment Moneiba
had a more or less constant tendency to
centre the figures, to give them a Velazquian or Manetian air that underscored a
fraught relationship with their ground. But
the void is not new in her painting, nor is
uncertainty. This not knowing what they
are doing there of the characters runs
throughout her work prior to Celebracin.
But it is true that the uncertainty used to
be more private and is now decidedly
social. Unconsciously, Moneibas work
converged with that of Teresa Arozena,
another member on leave of absence from
the School of La Laguna, who, in her latest work, endeavours to portray the new
collective subject in the mass. And also in
a festive space. But Moneibas solution,
despite the thematic overlap with Arozena,
takes another path out of consideration
for the medium itself: if photography tends
towards documentary, painting tends
towards the intertextual.
The progressive disintegration of the
blotches of colour in Moneibas painting
recalls, though at a distance, pointillism.
In point of fact, La Fiesta es para todos
(Everyones Invited to the Party) ironically
addresses one of impressionisms great
contributions to critical dilettantism:
one has to take some distance from the
painting in order to see what it depicts.
Pompier painting had an infinite depth of
field, and everything was given the same

73

focus, independently of its distance from

the plane of vision. This was only logical:
if, for the Christian mentality, the senses
are deceptive when not downright sinful then there is no reason to blur the
figures, to remain true to their phenomenological perception, when the truth is
that their integrity does not depends on
the place they occupy. Indeed, one of
the greatest services painting has paid to
classic metaphysics is precisely to give
figures a consistency and permanence
that they do not possess in their own right.
Therefore there is nothing strange in the
fact that the pre-impressionist critique of
this pompier classicism would take the
lead on the development of instantaneous
photography, not only altering the framing
(Degas, Toulouse Lautrec) but also selectively focusing the different elements
in the painting (Manet). This shorthand
perception, which Baudelaire believed to
be proper to the painter of modern life,
dissolved the profiles of the figures until
transforming them into mere blotches of
paint. Greenberg interpreted this decision
as evidence of modern arts inclination
towards abstraction, for painting to turn
in on itself, demonstrating disdain for the
theme in lieu of the medium itself, which
would be expressed in the fact that they
painted anyone. There is some truth in
this, but to be more exact, rather than
remaining indifferent they were particularly
interested in painting the bourgeoisie, the
inhabitants of the burgh, in their recently
conquered condition of anyone. The metropolis was the space of the newcomer,
the upstart, the immigrants who had left
their small conservative rural world, where the lack of social mobility ensured an
immutable identity going back to time immemorial: the local lord owed his position
to his lineage, just as the labourer inherited

74

his status from his ancestors, going back

to the beginning of time and thanks to a
divine will that consecrated the status
quo. The city was a secularised space
where the bourgeoisie wished to discredit
the nobility of birth and transform identity
into perfectibility: what from now on would
distinguish individuals was precisely the
fact of being identical to one another, and
to be able to do with their lives something
other than what was predestined from
birth. Personal fulfilment would not have
to do with remaining faithful to inherited
ancestral patterns, but rather with the
ability to overcome them. While classic art
fixed something for all eternity, following
guidelines laid down by tradition, for the
new communitarian models, it seemed
logical that the modern painter whose
task it was to represent them, in short to
fix them in the imaginary, would paint the
bourgeoisie, in other words those subjects
open to the possibility of change, as unfinished, sketchy figures. Furthermore, this
subjectivity in progress was coherent with
the new phenomenological perception
based on technology and not on tradition,
which dissolved the drawing into particles
of colour and turned focus into a question
of choice.
In Music in the Tuileries (1862) practically the whole painting is out of focus: the
people have been turned into the background, the very same social background
on which they try to define a subjectivity
than no longer depends on the civil registry
but on interpersonal exchanges. Manets
long, open and disjointed brushwork
makes the music which unites the social
body almost audible. The crowd is represented as a murmur that seems to dissolve the solidness of classical subjects. The
motif can only be appreciated from a distance, something which has nothing to do

with formalist painterly artifice, but with the

fact that now the trees must let us see the
forest. Oddly, this modern tradition was
annihilated for over a century by the alliance between romanticism and modernism,
which transformed open brushwork into a
medium for vernacular expressiveness or
the ahistorical purity of abstraction. Only a
few decades ago photography recovered
for art the tradition of modern life and, in
consequence, we could once again relate
the shorthand brushstroke with its true
socio-political content. The School of Vancouver, a great influence on the School of
La Laguna, precisely as a painterly movement, recovered Manet who, in his works
with multiple characters, focused on those
inner voids in which physical coexistence
affords a glimpse of the difficulty of personal encounters.
Similarly, the analysis of pointillism, which
broke down the spectrum into three basic
colours to force the eye to reconfigure it
synthetically, had focused on its scientific component. But the truth is that, in
Seurats paintings, this reference to technical perception brings to the surface
unforeseen obstacles in providing internal
cohesion to the distant proximity of the
figures against the ground of the no less
novel urban coexistence of nature and
industry. If classical representation mediated through shared beliefs and histories
the perception of social actors, who fulfilled a clearly-defined role in the community
narrative, the new scientific gaze broke up
not only the points of colour: the paintings
did not seem to allow for any more narrative that the incapacity of the social space
to assign the characters a role other than
extras. Different classes and generations,
ways of life and dressing all coexist in A
Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La
Grande Jatte (1884) in a proximity ten-

sed by the lack of intimacy. If in Tuileries

we could hear the murmur, in Bathers at
Asnires (1884) we can almost hear the
social silence against the deafening noise
of the industrial background.
The process of physical concentration
and social disintegration associated with
urbanisation and new technology is unquestionably linked to the disintegration
of the brushstroke and the estrangement
of painting. It was around this time that
art began to demand meaning. The recurring complaint against paintings that do
not stand up on their own, that demand
an explanation, has to do less with the
conceptualisation of art than the modern
crisis of the community narrative. Painting
has never been intuitive. The melancholic
longing for accessibility is owing to the
fact that we forgot that we once shared
a concept of beauty and sacred iconography. It is precisely this dissolution of
the solid heritage that we call modernism,
but not only with regards the physical
stereometry of painted figures but also the
body of doctrine that had made this integrity truthful. Manets and Seurats contemporaries began to take on board the
unprecedented fact of not having anything
in common other than sharing the same
space-time continuum and a growing
belief in this contingency. A melancholia,
especially perceptible on a Sunday afternoon, that could only be warded off by
self-absorption.
For centuries, the rhythms of rural life were
marked by festivals, which followed cosmic
rhythms, dotted by a calendar of saints
feast days from which we also took the
patron saints of our communities. Life was
defined by geographic factors which
were not under discussion that called
for vernacular learning and accommodated tasks and times to patterns of

75

regularity, both climatological as well

as social, guided by local divinities and
their representatives here on earth; by
the will of God. Feast days celebrated
the liturgy that ensured this continuity,
and provided a sense of transcendence to the act of living together. Taken
out in procession, the village saint of
course needed no more explanation
than what everybody had interiorised
with the arcane naturalness with which
one learns social norms in traditional
societies. The process of urbanisation removed us from the land, from
its rituals and its traditions, from its
longing for continuity and regularity.
It subjugated time and the calendar
to abstract criteria and denaturalised
time. And then there appeared the holiday, as we know it today, no longer
consecrated to honouring the gods
but to escaping from the city and
spending the day on the banks of the
Seine, having trivial conversations with
strangers with whom one would have
to invent a relationship not based on
a shared ancestral identity but on the
perception of slight changing impressions. And so the Sunday outing was
invented, one of the favourite themes
of the impressionist painters who, in
consequence, also had to invent a
way of disintegrating the brushstrokes
in order to capture the precarious
unity of these new impressions and
of their subjects. We then began to
internalise this melancholic abandonment of the social once the paste
of production and consumption has
been temporarily suspended which
we can perceive on a Sunday afternoon, when city streets are deserted
because it is a holiday. And this is
when Moneibas unsettling question

76

takes on greater meaning: What are

they doing there?
There is no room here to go into detail on the process of privatisation and
atomisation of the experience of space
that probably began around the same
time as capitalism and painting (insofar
as a mobile independent object, separate from cultural architecture, the walls
and ceilings of temples and palaces;
that could now be bought and sold,
obviously by the bourgeoisie, lovers
of genre painting). This is, in any case,
one of those images that we can all
understand without further explanation:
we have all had the same impression,
from inside a car, that the immense majority of urban public space is set aside
for private use and mobility; we have
all spent a Sunday afternoon, not on
the banks of the Seine but in the mall;
those of us who have thought at some
stage that letting our children play on
the street is dangerous; those of us
who have taken our plastic and cans
to the recycling bin honestly believing
that saving the planet is an individual
responsibility; those who have sat alone
incensed in front of the TV news; those
who no longer feel they belong to the
working class; those who have learned
to respect each others personal space
on public transport And those of us
who have at some stage thought that
changing all this has to do with raising
individual awareness. All these social
monads, all these loose brushstrokes,
equal in their difference, thanks to the
rhetoric of painting, all these gazes
from a certain distance, take on both
body and meaning and become a collective subject: the multitude. A mass
of people who suddenly grow politically
aware that, seen from the right angle,

our personal problems are, as Moneiba

Lemes says, the troubles all of us are
going through. This agglutinating distance will probably have to come from
emigration, the extreme experience of
being out of place.
Multitude is the notion that Spinoza
opposed to the dominant concept of
people with which Hobbes submitted
citizens to a unified and cohesive will. This
old term from political science has been
recently recovered and defended by Antonio Negri and Paolo Virno to try to resolve
the problem that has left the European
left defenceless against the unstoppable
advance of neoliberalism. Because, while the right preserves its class reference
firmly hanging on to capital and a
well-defined goal the multiplication at
any price of all possibilities of reproducing
this capital the left has not come up with
any alternative image to the Fordist worker
following the relocation of factories and
the externalisation of production and to
the productive middle classes following
the crisis of the bourgeois mentality and its
increasing precarity. Where can we find
a historic subject capable of resisting the
unstoppable advance of capital? As Negri responds, it will have to come from
where profits and income are: the metropolis. The metropolis is, without doubt,
the place, but it is more than just streets
and squares, it is also the multitude: the
network of social activity that channels
the energy of cognitive capitalism, creating wealth associated to processes of
social creation with added value. Industrial
production has been dematerialised or relocated to the periphery, while the added
value is generated in the field of experiences and differences, relations and influences, annotated exchanges of content and
know-how, at the expense of work which

is efficient yet increasingly dissociated from

income and its distribution. Capitalism
calls for more and more manual labour,
more people that generate contents in social networks, that diffuse and filter them
and infiltrate the very fabric of intimacy,
and not just through digital channels but
also through the metropolitan network of
encounters in which bodies, in their production of difference, operate as a driving
force for envy and desire, for programmed
obsolescence and models of discipline, for
the obsession with personal fulfilment and
the capacity to adapt to the system that
oppresses us, for the feeling of guilt on
the lack of integration and the aptitude to
undertake unprecedented possibilities for
self-exploration. But, in its infinite greed,
capitalism has managed to dissociate the
distribution of income from the expanded
labour on which it feeds, and which helps
it to colonise the very last nook and cranny of consciousness before we fall asleep
and the last corner of our affectivity and
creativity. Large corporations, who obtain
their succulent dividends from the traces
we leave behind us in our searches, from
the expansion of its effects among our
affects, from our gregarious propensity
to publically and obscenely display their
brands and to mystify their false promises
of happiness, make no bones about minimising, to the point of endangering the
very reproduction of the fabric from which
they prosper, any form of redistribution of
wealth.
The metropolis is, therefore, the network
that enables the flow of activity and value,
and sustains the forms of exploitation and
exclusion. That being said, it is also the
space of resistance. The transition from
the model of Fordist exploitation (which
extracted the surplus value of time from
the work of the proletariat) to post-Fordist

77

exploitation (which extracts the surplus

value of time from the life of the precariat)
has been consummated, but its incredible
expansion has delegated to an increasingly incontrollable multitude the very
instruments of discipline, to the point
that they are confused with the very
same social life that they exploit. The
spaces of opposition and of exploitation
overlap, like human self-fulfilment and
slavery. The same system that allows
us to cross old Aristotelian boundaries
between production, affective and political and intellectual life, that allows us to
reconnect work with creation and fulfilment, is also the system that subjugates
our lives to paradigms that put them at
risk. Metropolitan life is the space of a
renewed class struggle and the multitude is the new social agent of resistance
and exploitation, an undefined group of
singularities that cannot be represented
in terms of citizenry (in the framework
of the nation state), or of proletariat (in
the framework of a class system). It is
a social body articulated, like Moneibas
celebration, around emptiness or an
abyss. But (and here we return to the
premises of the School of La Laguna), is
there anything more public, more shared, that the sensation of precarity, of
the lack of place?
This emptiness is what capitalism is colonising. The corporate body no longer
pays for work that can be measured in
chronological time or physical strength,
it has its eyes on all of existence, it is
fighting to control the space of intimacy
in which life itself is turned into capital
and capital into life. And to this end it
uses the star product of the metropolitan factory of post-Fordian capitalism:
subjectivity. With respect to it, the
multitude operates as a producer and

78

consumer, as a superconductor or as
resistance. Sometimes re.productive,
other times oppositional, the multitude is
increasingly more cohesive and, at once,
more disintegrated. Therein the political
problem is reduced to how to represent
this contradictory flow of expansion and
contraction that Moneibas paintings
translate into a painterly problem. How
to provide visual unity to a set of flat blotches? How to unify the multitude in a political subject and preserve the difference
of singularities? How to encourage
devices of discontinuity and dispersion that fight against the cohesive
inertia from which capitalism feeds
yet without dispersing the capacity
for political resistance? In any case,
this is, as Beuys might put it, a problem of configuration. Or, if you like,
a painterly problem: how to depict
a political subject able to advance
the demobilised class struggle in
other words, the old aspiration for the
collateral profits of productivity and
performance to be extended fairly
to the whole of society, and for the
ostentation of inequality to stop operating as a driving engine for social
creativity. Because we have been
looking at the financial, fiscal, political and labour crises as short-term
consequences of technical glitches,
when they are in fact the ontological
crisis of the abstract representation of
life in common. The age-old problem
intuited by the painters of modern
life how to depict the metropolis;
how to fix the impression produced
by something characterised by the
dissolution of all things solid; how to
represent the multitude, that mass of
people that are defined by their lack
of definition now takes on a curren-

cy and novelty that none of the forms

of modernism were able to forecast.
Therein the symbolic and political importance of Moneibas interest in painting
a new constitutive transition, in evolving
from genre and history painting without
renouncing the problem of the relationship
between figure and ground. And to do so
by confronting the forms of abstraction
given that the definition of the collective
subject has a phenomenological as well
as an ontological reach with the social
and political tensions that cut through the
metropolis. To rebel is just, but it is not
enough, claimed Negri (La metrpolis es
a la multitud lo que, antes, la fbrica era
a la clase obrera, 2005). What is being
transformed into capital in the process of
colonisation of life in globalised post-Fordism is the control of the representation of
subjectivity in the metropolis. Or, in other
words, the representation of the metropolis as the bio-political field in which the
production of subjectivities is oppositional, to the extent that to be oppositional
means declining in a thousand different
ways the specific, bio-political possibilities
of being. The only weak point of capital is
that it depends on a social event that we
can represent as a protest, as the scenario of an uncompromising accumulation of
multiple struggles. In this scenario, having
ideas and wishing to formalise them, this
desire to make that we could call art, can
have enormous oppositional political consequences.
As we have come to expect from Moneibas
painting, the figure seems to fight against
the ground in order not to dissolve in it.
If this fight was once suffused with melancholia, now it radiates celebration. The
dislocated subjects have become a multitude. And Moneibas painting celebrates
it. The single and the multiple coexist: the

images are created like mosaics of faces.

Yet, like cameras that can recognise faces
in group photos, the mechanical need to
focus is dispersed and exhausted, and the
lens only finds a collective body, a social
form. There is no people docilely lending
itself to be depicted. The faces are undefined because they could be anyone, part
of a human tide. A tide we are no longer
afraid of since the recent elections: what
was always represented with unease
the masses, the plebs, lack of definition,
alienation, dehumanisation is now represented as a festival, a party. From the
distance we see a multitude, but close up
we only see confetti, a more or less comic
reference to pointillism in which historicist
learning and scientific reference take on
humorous overtones. The celebration of
painting consists in finding meaning once
again in the shorthand form of representing the multitude as a condition of the
contemporary subject, of representing
non-representational democracy, of celebrating a new form of making history, in
plural, a history without names and dates
(not History but herstory), and not forgetting, with an intertextuality lacking in academic affectation, that this is the problem
of painting since its modern origins, that
the monochrome surfaces of modernism
must flutter and become flags, the flags of
the community of those who have nothing
in common. The painting party consists
in finding meaning once again in a reluctant and rough medium, like stepped-on
chewing gum, that deconstructs all its political ambitions by bringing into question
its very mechanisms of representing the
collective. Painting is a celebration: with
as many symbolic as technical problems.

79

Estudio del Centro de Arte La Regenta, 2015 / Artists Studio. La Regenta Art Center. 2015

Building the image by

paring away. Moneiba
Lemess free verses
David Barro
It would be relatively easy to outline a
history of twentieth century figurative painting by following the painterly evolution of
Moneiba Lemes, even though we would
probably have to trace it backwards.
This evolution spans from Borremans to
Velzquez, from liquid painting and what
Jordan Kandor called the Tuymans effect
to the extreme values espoused by some
impressionist artists. It also blurs history
just as she blurs the individual by means
of formal and chromatic distortions. Her
work is a displacement of the past within

the present and vice versa, depicting scenes of collectiveness where we are never
sure whether we are looking at a festive
get-together, a mere gathering of individuals in a passive attitude or politically
charged meetings and images. As the title
of the exhibition says, everyones invited
to the party.
Moneiba Lemes builds by paring away, as
if she were following a Giacomettian rationale. In her practice, the emotional temperature is given more prominence than
methodical recording, and her gaze, which
glosses over the image, does not allow us
to follow a narrative, which is condensed
in a question. The physical presence of
the people she depicts is diminished as is
the clarity of the motifs; the lines delineate
but dont define. These images look for a
point of connection, never a full stop. For
the image lies in a gaze that, far from con-

81

clusive, opens up to interpretations and

possibilities. There is an undeniable poetic
background, just as the fragile appearance is undergirded by carefully measured,
meticulous crafting. Indeed, an enduring
feature in her practice is an always wet,
never dry, gaze. Everything is known yet
oozes mystery. It is a living breathing
reality. Something is happening or about
to happen, and something is also taking
place inside the image. Each painting is a
free verse, although parsed with her other
paintings.
We are talking about painting as estrangement, because the information denied us
covers reality with a veil. The image is deconstructed through a process of condensation and blurring. The space is awash
with murmurs. Moneiba Lemes embraces
the accomplishments of art history and
contrive her scenes by tapping into the
strange autonomy of the impressionist
brushstroke or Czannes masses of colour, arriving at the image in a way not too
dissimilar from how Mondrian rendered
the landscape in geometric abstraction. In
consequence, it is a brand of metaphorical figuration, of a world that is crumbling,
vanishing, fading in confusion. Akin to the
image that lingers after we shut our eyes
until it eventually disappears. Matter is
dematerialised, as in Medardo Rossos
sculpture, but this is even truer for the
individual, reduced to a formless mass.
Moneiba Lemess painting is not heroic,
nor does it strive for effect. On the contrary, it spurns staticness and her images
seem to slip away, as if they were always
on the verge of leaving. The restricted
visual field complicates the apprehension
of the image, forcing us to work with distances and ways of approaching painting.
Lemes is obviously well versed with the
evolution of painting and she works with

82

a cognisance of that legacy. As this is a

summary rapprochement to her painting, I
would hazard a guess, though I could well
be wrong, that Moneiba Lemes appropriates from Luc Tuymans what he had in
turn borrowed from Gerhard Richter, that
crude basic way of illustrating which was
also adopted by major artists like Marlene Dumas, Wilhelm Sasnal, Eberhard
Havekost, Magnus von Plessen or Ren
Danils. All of them work with a reduction
of the image so as to end up representing
the unrepresentable. Tuymans predicated
his particular approach on a paradoxical
premise: the permanence of the static
image in the memory is stronger than the
mobile image; its finitude and vanishing,
and the impossibility of ever retrieving that
image accrues a meaning that leads to
a mental equivalence, which will indeed
remain in motion and increasingly so. This
is the state of Moneiba Lemess masses
of people, taking on the density ensuing
from that process, the very durability of
the image. Accordingly, construed in a
blurred fashion, her Baistas, turistas y
otros entes flotantes disguises and conceals her painterly craft. I am reminded
of Michal Borremans and Vija Celmins,
and of how Delfim Sardo compares them,
claiming that the whole of their painting is
dominated by two stifling factors: the vast
painterly efficiency, bordering on effective
virtuosity with all the derogatory and
conservative charge which the mastery of
the craft was accused of within the tradition of the avant-gardes and a deviant,
strange and uncomfortable corporality,
present in the truncated bodies, in the pointless gestures, and in the distortedness
of the characters peopling their paintings.
Just like those two artists, Moneiba Lemes
leaves meaning in suspension, drawing a
veil that functions like a wall, a temporal

distance, or a hitch in space. Reality becomes fuzzy and indistinct while it is being
reconstructed, represented. The ambiguity of painting and the literalism of the photographic image are balanced, and our
senses are excited by the mystery of the
out-of-focus, something has come down
to us from Velzquez or from Leonardo.
There has been no shortage of writers
who have examined the enigmatic lack of
definition in the placement of the monarchs in Velzquezs painting Las Meninas
as a dialogue between the artist and the
beholder; a place where the same and
the other meet at ease. And it is in this
non-place, in the Borgean zone where
the slippage between reality and fiction
occurs, that Moneiba Lemes places
her work, in a place with no place. She
produces existing, projected images of a
reality that is never the image of the real
but the transversal gaze of the person looking at it, the instant of a present floating
in memory. For Moneiba Lemess gaze is
tense, the gaze of someone working with
the defects of the image. Her journey is
that of the encounter. Different yet at once
close to Hoppers world with no way out.
A crowd of individuals, lonely in their multitude, devoid of certainties, devoid of attributes. Reality is dissolved, out of focus,
in its depiction. It is an elusive, intangible
reality. Previously smothered in sober, grey
hues and now chromatically tense, with
a singularised, autonomous, segmented
brushstroke.
In his celebrated article The Tuymans
Effect published in Artforum in 2004, Jordan Kantor spoke of Sasnals parentage
with Tuymans, looking at the role of the
painterly. For them, a specific type of representational shorthand reigns supreme:
A group of wonky brushstrokes can stand
for face, while abstract, almost formless

blotches read as hands. At first this pictorial shorthand might be explained as a

simple consequence of working from photographs, which already reduce a threedimensional scene to a flat constellation
of dark and light shapes. Yet by divorcing
the painterly touch from the mimetic task
alone and undermining the very idea of
technical expertise by highlighting clumsy
brushwork Tuymans has pointed to new
ways of working from photographic sources that do not rely on dated or ideologically laden ideas of craft and skill.
What lies behind Moneiba Lemess practice is social critique, veiled yet sufficiently
clear. The confusion and the angst implied
by the mass are directly proportional to
the insignificance of being just one more
among the crowd. I believe that her works
could easily be used to illustrate stories
by Papini, who wrote: Imagine the whole
world suddenly coming to a halt at a specific moment, and that everything would
remain exactly where it was and everybody would remain still, like statues, in the
position they were in at that moment, in
the middle of the action they were carrying
out... If that happened and if, nevertheless, people were still able to think and to
remember and judge what they had done
and what they were doing, and could examine everything they had done since they
were born and ponder on what they still
wish to do before they die, imagine just
how much despair would smoulder beneath the tragic silence of that momentarily
motionless world! Moneiba Lemess painting, those abstractions of faces and bodies in the form of brushstrokes, is akin to
strangling that desire to gain access to the
image. I believe that these images have no
beginning and no end, a conflict on which
John Berger offered an insightful reflection, separating photography inasmuch

83

as a record of the past from painting a

prophecy received from the past on what
the beholder is actually seeing in front of the
painting at the present moment. It is the
visual image as a comment on absence, as
the absence of what is described. That is
why they captivate us, like a crowd in a kind
of dead-end. Like the powerlessness of the
men Papini trapped in their own time. We all
believe some of the moments we have experienced to be decisive and consecutive,
leading to something still to come. Life is
made of dreams and ideals, of projects; in
Papinis words: your whole present is made
out of thoughts about your future. Therefore, in his elusive mirror, Papini writes words
that, I would argue, seem to empathise with
these paintings: Everything that exists, that
is here, seems dark, petty, insufficient and
inferior to us, and the only solace we receive
is by thinking that the present is nothing but
a preface, a long and tedious introduction
to the beautiful book of the future. Everyone, whether they know it or not, clings onto
this belief. If they were told that they would
die within the hour, whatever they are doing
or have done would hold no pleasure, relish
or value. Without the mirror of the future,
present-day reality would be dull, squalid
and meaningless.
Moneiba Lemess painting is concentrated,
capable of handing itself over to the sublime. Everything coexists in a tension that is
at once calm and intense. That explains why
she leaves so many things out of the image.
I am reminded of the increasingly thickening
fog ever-present in the works of Friedrich
that would become oppressive in Turners
paintings. Here we are not too far away from
that. Friedrich claimed that the eye and the
imagination usually feel a deeper attraction
for the hazy and distant than for what is
near and close at hand. That white abyss,
that horizontal abyss appears in Moneiba
Lemess colourful crowds, as she takes
the pictorial component of the scene to its
limits. Yet there is always something that
84

eludes us. A mirror-like situation looms. Nor

are we too far from Monet when he pursued
the dissolution of his lilies, where it is simply
no longer possible to make out the actually plants from their reflections. In Moneiba
Lemess work the horizon also vanishes and
the space never quite defines itself. What is
interesting in Monet is how as he gradually
gets deeper and deeper into the pool built
by himself and therefore so familiar to him
the actual references disappear. Everything
is water, and what was impressionist now
becomes abstract expressionism avant la
lettre. We dont know what is real and what
is reflection, probably because everything
is reality and everything is the reflection of
something given.
Moneiba Lemess painting comments on
what surrounds us and on what inhabits
us. In other words, it is more a trace of
projected reality as a way of seeing. The
dimension is pictorial while the space is
intermediary. It is more a case of looking
through the image rather that looking at it.
Which is not far removed from Godard when
he said that cinema is not the reflection of
reality but the reality of that reflection. In
Moneiba Lemess painting what matters is
not what is being gazed at, but the gaze
itself.

85

Estudio en Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. 2015 / Artists Studio. Gran Canaria. 2015

Everyones Invited
to the Party:
a conversation with
Moneiba Lemes1
Jos Otero
Jos Otero: Before we start talking about
your work, Id just like to take the opportunity to briefly outline your background. You
were born in Mcher, a beautiful farming
village in Lanzarote. You started painting
with a private tutor. You then enrolled at
the Art School in Arrecife, and later at the
School of Fine Arts in La Laguna. You lived
in Braunschweig (Germany) and in Barcelona for a short period, before moving to

Berlin where you spent three years; and

then you returned to the Canaries a few
months ago. Your trajectory would seem
to confirm that Canarian artists, and not
just the younger ones, need to set foot
outside the islands.
Moneiba Lemes: Without getting into the
depressing situation in Spain at the moment, where the number of young people
forced to emigrate is at record levels, Id
say that I left for Berlin because I was feeling a little suffocated by the art scene in
the Canaries. Besides being the place in
Europe for less commercially-oriented art,
Berlin was relatively inexpensive for a big
city. I had some friends living there who
encouraged me to make the move. However, Berlin has changed a lot over the last
few years. But you know that better than

1. I have a disclosure to make: Moneiba Lemes

and I have been partners for some years now. The
reader is also informed that I too am a painter. So,
now it is up to you to decide whether I am looking
through rose-tinted glasses.

87

me, given that you had already been there

ten years when I arrived.
JO: Lets talk a bit about that suffocating
feeling in the Canaries. Though I know
what you mean, I think that suffocation
is maybe not the right word. After all, here
it is easy to create (and live). Anyone who
has been away for some years knows
that. Compared to the Canaries, a lot of
regions of Spanish and also wide swathes
of Central Europe are a cultural wasteland.
And I dont think Im exaggerating or being
chauvinistic.
ML: Lets take one thing at a time. On
one hand, there was widespread disillusionment among my generation, who had
all just finished university, which basically
had to do with the difficulty in materialising
the work they were doing and in finding
a platform outside the tiny professional
circuit. In that regard, you could say that
the Canary Islands is a hot bed of ideas,
albeit stagnant ideas. On the other hand,
emigrating can also respond to another
impulse that might seem contradictory:
rather than to connect with another art
scene, one leaves to disconnect from
everything. In the ultra-peripheral cultural
world of the Canaries we tend to be very
dependent on what our colleagues and
other people from this world do, wouldnt
you agree? From a professional viewpoint,
and even more so from a personal perspective, this can be very positive because
it creates a sense of respect and affection
among colleagues, but it can also give rise
to an awkward inertia.
JO: True. Weve often talked about reverse isolation. There are times when it
would be better to be ignored so that you
can produce with total freedom, and thats

88

where the big city comes in, giving you

the anonymity of a place where no one
cares what you do. At least that was my
experience in 2003, when I left for Berlin.
The situation is completely different from
the Canarian artists who emigrated during Francos time and afterwards, when
people escaped from this cultural desert
in order to connect with the metropolis,
rather than simply leaving the family home,
where parents (and the cultural institution
as a whole) make life too easy.
ML: Many people in the art world, particularly newspapers, still peddle that
myth and are very quick to sell success
abroad even if its just a small show in
a caf in Berlin or London. When I took
part at the Padru Biennale which is not
precisely one of the most famous in the
world one newspaper wrote about the
success of Canarian artists abroad. In
any case, no matter where you are, art is
a subjective activity, not in the sense of
introspective subjectivity or anything like
that, but as an action of the subject and
as relationships between subjects.
JO: Intersubjectivity.
ML: I hate that word, but you could be
right. I like the art made by people I know,
either here, in Berlin, or in Nouakchott
(Mauritania), where I had a wonderful
experience with artists from that community. Id prefer to play an active role
in the programme of some local space
or comment on the latest works made
by someone I know or by a friend rather
than being up-to-date with the latest
by Olafur Eliasson in New York. It feels
strange to engage with art if you are not
close to the works and the artists. As
an artist, and as an individual involved in

some way, its hard for me to be a mere

spectator.

our society is still contending with today.

JO: There are two clearly differentiated periods in your painting: first, an early grey
period, so to speak, and then the body of
work you created over the last two years
which makes up the bulk of this show.
Before commenting in more detail about
them, do you remember what books you
had on your bedside table during those
two phases?

JO: Im tired of hearing artists talk

about their issues. For me, its really
worth fighting for the idea of exhibiting
without illustrating, of creating content
without having to gloss the content. Interestingly enough, it seems that social
issues are beginning to make their way
into your painting

ML: In 2013 I began studying philosophy at the UNED (National Distance

Education University). You know all too
well the amount of books I had piled
up. I gave up after a while because I
just didnt have the time, and now I
can read without anxiety, although that
also means that I have renounced the
seriousness of academic research. During the grey period I was interested
in Zygmunt Bauman. At first, Bauman
might seem like one of those media-star
sociologists who coin a concept that is
dragged up to explain any question (you
know, this liquid thing of his), but he
is a far-minded thinker with a sweeping
insight into everything, into the world
that awaits us around the corner. Ive
always been interested in certain texts
which I try to translate into the language of painting without falling back on
literal illustrations. In that grey period,
I would describe my painting as poor,
unstable, precarious, fluid, liquid, and
so on. It didnt try to put a face on those ideas, nor explain them or propound
the kind of working theses you can read
in so many artists statements. It was
a time of painterly struggle to prevent
the figure from becoming diluted in the
background, which is the same struggle

ML: Yes, but again, its thanks to a purely painterly development. It comes
from when I was (we were) paying a lot
of attention to Pintura: el Concepto de
Diagrama2, a compilation of lectures by
Deleuze, whose primary goal was to
determine whether or not painting has
something to say to philosophy. It is a reconstruction of thinking that runs parallel
to form, to the image; a very honest way
of addressing art in my view. It starts in a
very low key but then flies high, and it does
so from the painters perception towards
the philosophers and not the other way
round. There are very few others essays
like that, on painting-thinking, which are
not just mere historical or social investigations. Im particularly interested in essays written by some painters like Klee,
Czanne, Van Gogh, Bacon, Tuymans,
among others.
JO: You once told me that your second
creative phase was defined by the decision to bring your painting to a crisis,
to force the machine beyond the point
where it could have just kept on going
naturally.
ML: Yes. In fact I struggled for nearly one
year, struggled and lost. I have very few
paintings from that period.

2. Deleuze, Gilles: Pintura: el Concepto de

Diagrama Editorial Cactus. Buenos Aires. 2008.

89

JO: What is the painting or paintings

that marked that change? From the
viewpoint of the book by Deleuze,
which is always very specific and very
figurative, Id like to know exactly which
gestures, exactly which brushstrokes
successfully forced the work.
ML: There was a year when my way of
painting entered into crisis. I also found
it harder to find motifs to depict. And
when you dont know what to paint, the
first thing you do is portray what you
see in your studio: the paraphernalia of
painting, the cans, the brushes, and so
on. I painted some painters rags, dried
and hardened cloths full of stains. I tried
to imitate those stains with bright colours (absent from my work up until then),
and while I was drawing the decorative
patterns in those cloths I learned to
render them with a technique that later
allowed me to make those masses of
colour/masses of people that appear in
other paintings.
JO: That makes me think how pointless
it is to try to link the meaning of artworks exclusively to their form or to their
content, as if these were somehow separate, easily detachable entities. But
both things take place simultaneously.
ML: In any case, I see myself as a
painter of how things are done. But that
doesnt mean that Im not concerned
about what I paint. However, it is true
that if, at that time, I hadnt believed in
the importance of portraying masses of
people I wouldnt have done it. When
you paint you are constantly finding solutions for many things; but if one has
found a good way of, lets say, painting
trees and doesnt want to paint trees,

90

then the choice of subject matter to

explore would obviously be paramount.
JO: In that regard, there is one motif that
made the crossover between your two
periods and which I find highly instructive from a wider interpretative viewpoint,
concerning form and content: stage diving. As you said before, here there is an
evident desire to force the dissolution of
the figure in the background. It is as if
the resolution of that conflict between
the figure and the ground had found
its natural correlate in social conflict,
with those masses of people in various
attitudes. In consequence, it is easy to
infer that the masses, the gatherings,
the flags, the people in the parks, respond to the social and political situation
Spain is currently going through, which
is must more turbulent than a few years
back, in your grey period.
ML: Yes, that way of understanding the
work was something I wanted to hint
at right from the beginning through the
title of the exhibition La fiesta es para
todos (Everyones Invited to the Party).
The party of painting is for everyone,
for the masses informing it, the masses
of paint and the masses of individuals.
Now, figure and ground are part of the
same thing. The painting has been flattened.
JO: Does this have anything to do with
a shift towards Clement Greenbergs
endgame notion of the flat painting?
ML: As far as I know, he viewed flatness as a kind of pure state of painting.
Well, thats not something Im interested in. I dont believe in the evolution
of art, but in its adaptation to its given

historical moment. If figure and ground

are mixed up, maybe its because both
factors appear to complement and understand each other, with the figure no
longer being afraid of the ground. Now
the conflict is different. Im obsessed
with providing some kind of direction to
the masses. In the paintings of masses,
even the most abstract ones, the brushstrokes have some direction. I try to
create a kind of spinning or turmoil with
the overall composition; I am looking for
movement. Deleuze spoke about this:
the painter starts from a clich-idea,
he paints it by creating a mass on the
canvas, looking for its form; and there,
from that amalgam of colours, from that
layer of messed-up oil or mire, the idea
emerges, but without the preconceived
quality of the clich. That would be the
new figure, the mass in motion; or, back
to Deleuze, that would be the painterly
factwhat is born from the process
and not from the mere will of rendering
something on a canvas.
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, May 2015

91

Moneiba Lemes. Lanzarote 1986.

Licenciada en Bellas Artes por la Universidad de la Laguna (2011) en el itinerario de Pensamiento Artstico y Prospectiva
Cultural. En el ao 2009 estudia en la Hochschule fr Bildende Knste Braunschweig (Alemania) y en 2010 en la Universidad
de Barcelona. Desde 2011 vive y trabaja entre Berln y Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
Exposiciones individuales
2015 La fiesta es para todos. Centro de Arte La Regenta. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
2015 La fiesta es para todos. Casa de los Coroneles. Fuerteventura.
2014 La fiesta es para todos. Sala de Arte Contemporneo (SAC). Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
Exposiciones colectivas (seleccin)
2014 Artfetch Offline. New art in Berlin. GSL Projekt. Berln.

25.000 pies. Instituto Cabrera Pinto. Tenerife.

Archeology fabricated. Junefirst Gallery. Berln.
2013 X Biennale Internazionale di Pittura di Padru: Isole. Cerdea, Italia.

Dogs and Queens. A woman whisper. Das Hotel. Berln.
2012 Versos. Galera Manuel Ojeda. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
Premio Internacional de Pintura Guasch Coranty. Centre dArt Tecla Sala. Barcelona.
2011 Art <30. Sala Pars y Galera Trama. Barcelona.
Premio de Pintura Plcido Fleitas. Espacio Canarias. Madrid.
2010 TNF-VLC. Sala La Perrera. Valencia.
2009 Por una cartografa de lo intermedio. LEstruch. Sabadell, Barcelona.

Escuela de la Laguna. Galera el Castillo. Tenerife.

Canarios por un tubo. Galera Juan Francisco Manzano. Matanza, Cuba.
2008 25 pies. Orientaciones. Instituto Cabrera Pinto. Tenerife.
2007 Residencias Nmadas. Circulo de Bellas Artes. Tenerife.

8.1: Distorsiones. Documentos. Naderas y relatos. Centro Atlntico de Arte Moderno (CAAM). Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
Premios y residencias
2013 X Biennale Internazionale di Pittura di Padru: Isole. Cerdea, Italia.
2012 Premio Internacional de Pintura Guasch Coranty. Barcelona.
2011 Premio de Pintura Art<30. Barcelona.
2009 Residencia en el Centro de Produccin Artstica y Visual LEstruch. Sabadell, Barcelona.
2007 Residencia artstica en La Maison des Artistes de Nuakchott, Mauritania.

93

Moneiba Lemes. Lanzarote 1986.

Graduated with a BA in Fine Arts from ULL (Universidad de la Laguna) in 2011, majoring in Art Philosophy and Cultural Prospective. In 2009 she studied at the Hochschule fr Bildende Knste Braunschweig (Germany) and in 2010 at UB (Universitat
de Barcelona). Since 2011 she lives and works between Berlin and Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.

Solo Exhibitions
2015 La fiesta es para todos. Centro de Arte La Regenta. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
2015 La fiesta es para todos. Casa de los Coroneles. Fuerteventura.
2014 La fiesta es para todos. Sala de Arte Contemporneo (SAC). Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
Group Exhibitions (selection)
2014 Artfetch Offline. New art in Berlin. GSL Projekt. Berln.

25.000 pies. Instituto Cabrera Pinto. Tenerife.

Archeology fabricated. Junefirst Gallery. Berln.
2013 X Biennale Internazionale di Pittura di Padru: Isole. Sardinia, Italy.

Dogs and Queens. A woman whisper. Das Hotel. Berln.
2012 Versos. Galera Manuel Ojeda. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.

Guasch Coranty International Painting Prize. Centre dArt Tecla Sala. Barcelona.
2011 Art <30. Sala Pars and Galera Trama. Barcelona.
Plcido Fleitas Painting Prize. Espacio Canarias. Madrid.
2010 TNF-VLC. Sala La Perrera. Valencia.
2009 Por una cartografa de lo intermedio. LEstruch. Sabadell, Barcelona.

Escuela de la Laguna. Galera el Castillo. Tenerife.

Canarios por un tubo. Galera Juan Francisco Manzano. Matanza, Cuba.
2008 25 pies. Orientaciones. Instituto Cabrera Pinto. Tenerife.
2007 Residencias Nmadas. Circulo de Bellas Artes. Tenerife.

8.1: Distorsiones. Documentos. Naderas y relatos. Centro Atlntico de Arte Moderno (CAAM). Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
Awards and Residencies
2013 X Biennale Internazionale di Pittura di Padru: Isole. Sardinia, Italy.
2012 Guasch Coranty International Painting Prize. Barcelona.
2011 Art<30 Painting Prize. Barcelona.
2009 Artist-in-residence at LEstruch Art and Visual Production Centre. Sabadell, Barcelona.
2007 Artist-in-residence at La Maison des Artistes, Nouakchott, Mauritania.

94