What does Santiago paint when it paints?

Preliminary notes for an essay about Santiago Aranguiz Sanchéz philosophy of art

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Related to "What do you love when you love" by Gonzalo Rojas)

("Qué se ama cuando ama")

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One possible question is: why can Santiago see and paint the air? The answer may be in Turner, the fog over the Thames. The air is seen for its virtue, for what it causes in what is not itself, it is not fog, but we see it thanks to it, the air is not the sun, the air is the spectrum of the prism, the movement and the color of the space between those people who are walking.

That -in- between- that the Japanese know inhabits their paintings, it becomes visible, that is the magic.

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None of this is possible to perceive without entering into a state of contemplation. What the Thames is for Turner is the mountain range for Santiago, which enters and leaves his living room whenever it wants, and Santiago, through his paintings, enters and leaves one's head whenever he wants. Through the parietals, as Rojas would say, he enters beyond the mind, deeper than the unconscious, his painting speaks directly to the spirit, like music, which is also abstract, it can go deeper than the rational, to the soul.

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I am not the one to say this or to speak with authority about the master, I lack years of study, because he goes fast, faster than one can process, very fast, because he is more lucid than all of us, he almost does not know what to do with his lucidity, he is inhabiting metaphysically and the ink and color run across his white table.

 

I have contemplated in his paintings, the air, the wind over the islands, the sea screaming white over the rocks, Other windows allow you to see the south with the poplars and the mist that turns its air grey, those days in black and white between rivers, water and stone.

 

One of his ways of painting the air is with rocks, his painting inhabits a world of the ineffable, that is why it is impossible to explain how with rocks, shores and other times with some trees in the distance, he makes you see the air.

 

That magical world where multiple readings are possible.

He has a sharp and tempered eye at the same time, and another poetic one that goes beyond beauty and “the new”, to the freshness that is eternal.

 

So in the rain and on the islands? The navigation through the southern channels? That air between the rocks and the foam? The Patagonian wind that carries away the water?

 

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How much synchronicity between his life and mine.

 

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The depth of the colour and its formal expression, suggest that this is the famous phrase of a little boy who had a small planet with a rose and a star. The story written by Antoine sitting on the sand of the Sahara goes to the same mill, which sums up the essentials in one sentence.

 

Santiago goes straight to provoke a reflection for each different person or for each different thought that sees them, what do you see when you see?, “a lady on a bicycle reflected in the water”, “it’s a cloud” , “it’s a train in the fog”, multiple exegeses or none, if one is capable like the Buddhist monk, who meditates and remains without thoughts, without interpretations, and is capable of contemplating without meaning, contemplating the ineffable, the timeless, that which cannot be seen. A non-hermeneutic ontology.

 

Why does he paint what cannot be seen? I think I am not mistaken in saying that it has to do with a child who remains in him, a child who sees through a window full of drops and water that transfigures the image, a procession, with lights, that take as many forms as a child's imagination, but this time it connects with the sacred, that procession, those people who go together because they believed in the same thing, it is a small child who connects with the sacred, with that heaven that cannot be seen, where paradise is waiting for us.

That child who sees the lights through the windows forever draws the light of the sacred. That is one of the mystery ́s key.

 

Santiago has the gift of making the invisible shine. The splendor of the mist, of the cloud, of the rock. Sometimes you can still see the lights there, the people transfigured by the rain on the window, which the child continues to look at, hypnotized by the beauty of this sacred walk.

I always think that his entire apartment is an Aleph, that the paintings in his living room are windows to a psychological, mysterious world that we are barely able to understand, but that he is able to bring to splendor.

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His living room is an Aleph that challenges us, with the strength of the sea and the lightness of the brume.

Santiago, talks about the dispossession of heritage and I think he has that point of view as a starting point. The heritage, which disappears in an abandoned schooner, the skeleton half-submerged in the sand of time and the dispute of the field between color and rust, the color that remains as a testimony of an existence, of something that is already disappearing and the rust of oblivion. As always, as in The Odyssey, the theme is oblivion. That skeleton where metaphors live, is the protoinaugural idea of what he does today, it is called La Bartola.

 

He makes everything look easy, but we have spent fantastic days sharing the philosophy of his art and of course, what clothes do I wear in front of him? I defend myself like a tennis player, with what I can, with what I have read since I was a child, the libraries of my childhood.

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I grew up inside a library, literally, and I think I will go inside infinite libraries. I think that the gift my father gave me, living and growing up inside his library, has allowed me to have this dialogue with Santiago that makes me think to infinity.
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For Santiago, his relationship with his father was also decisive, although difficult, enlightened. With his father, in the fire that transfigures metal, and his uncle, a sculptor of monuments, of those heroes on horseback who light up the esplanades, his temper, his eye and his illuminated hands were forged. It was with his family, in the workshop, that his temperance and an incomparable craft were forged.

 

Temperance is one of our words.

 

The little boy who humbly looks out the window became a beloved king, with the magic of seeing and showing beauty and the divine.

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Being heard and being able to listen to Santiago and contemplate his art is a unique experience and one of the greatest honors of my life, a privilege like the one I had with Gonzalo Rojas. In his apartment, in its depth, in the spots that he boldly explores, my inner child also navigates through infinity.

 

           Today is a fabulous day! 
           Without bridle, spurs or reins,

           Let us set off on the back of wine

           To a divine and magical heaven!

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               (from The Wine of Lovers by Charles Boudelaire )

 

 

 

Manuel Araneda Castex Farellones, November 2024