Raul Diaz Journey

RAUL DIAZ J ourney

Raul Diaz, Córdoba, Argentina

Cover: ULTIMO BOTE 2014 Mixed Media on Wood Panel 32 1/2 x 40 1/8 inches

RAUL DIAZ J ourney

New Paintings and Sculpture

January 17 - February 28, 2015

Essay by Shaw Smith, Ph.D.

625 South Sharon Amity Road Charlotte, NC 28211 704.365.3000 gallery@jeraldmelberg.com www.jeraldmelberg.com

Sleeping Slowly: The Poetic Vessels of Raul Diaz

Come sleepwalk with me. Don’t you ever walk in your sleep? How do you remember when you are not consciously thinking? Did you ever go back to where you were? Did you just dream your sleepwalk? How do you know? Do some of us sleepwalk better than others? How fast do I walk in my sleep? Do you/I sometimes sleepwalk slowly? Where did you/we go? How do they/you remember? Who do they/we tell? Why? Raul Diaz invites us to remember... to go back... and to return again to those places which we keep like hidden treasures... memories which we do not consider all the time, but special gems which we take out and examine from time to time. Sometimes he reminds us of these moments even when we least expect them or when we are not even looking for them. But they are there all the while. With the help of the artist’s gentle but sure hand, the viewer of his paintings joins in like a hesitant sleepwalker and makes a first, careful, trusting, seeking step as if into a narrow boat which Diaz has prepared to take us to these secret places. Finding a delicate balance in the soft rocking of the small barge, we too begin to dream of our own memories, unaware that we are now in a reality which is a world twice removed from waking rationality. In this poetic world our sleepwalking eyes slow to a pace outside everyday time. Still, we dream on freely as we see the ribs of the wooden planks of our small boat transfigure themselves into the veins of an upturned leaf floating delicately upon the water. But we are not in a free fall. Once in the dreamy vessels of his compositions, Diaz assumes control and reassures his fellow traveler that he has been here and there before. He is the skilled craftsman of these tiny boats of memory. The unsteadiness of the humid surfaces is braced by a strong sense of symmetry, a kind of classical balance and

equilibrium, which structures the senses. Gaining confidence, we note that we are not alone. Along the shores, which we are passing, we see the slow-motion saltimbanques performing. They retrace the time-honored rituals of ancient family visits to the same lake along the historical paths of Picasso and Cezanne, all fathers and grandfathers who have dreamed between these banks of memory and order. Now giving over, we become the delicate sleepwalkers in these vessels. Drifting through our dreamy landscape, we softly somersault between memories of particular and architectural sites and universal archetypal forms, between silence and chorus, between self- denunciation (am I really here?) and the obsessive markings of an anonymous goldsmith (someone else is really here before I am,) and between reason and fantasy. Our surrealist acrobatics dissolve into a muted celebration of life, which envelops us in the richly rolling Argentine landscape. Framed by a layering of plastered walls and tilted surfaces, we dance with the dreaming groups of people on floating horizons. Momentarily we wonder if we are awake. Where are we? What are these landscapes? Who is with us? Our judgments try to take shape. Are we simply looking at paintings by Raul Diaz or are we finding ourselves within them? Slowly we recognize that such provocative visions are the incised, chiseled, drawn, stenciled, repeated and painted barges of memory which Diaz presents us for these shared voyages balanced on the keels of craft and conscience. These fragile and yet resistant sloops sail at the speed of pyramids navigated by the profiled and frontal priests on slow-moving, inward seas. Even the names of these dream vessels emerge from the alternating attention first to insignificance and then to a fetish which, like the sleepwalker’s eye, patiently focuses on what may appear to be neglected but which proves to be an ark of souvenir and passage.

these same vessels which once transported us. We can bridge the disconnected moments of the banal with the memory of our sleepwalk. Knowing that we cannot always remain in the poetry of contemplation, we realize something extraordinary: that the social conscience of the present too, can begin with dreams of our connections to the past. Here the remaining boundaries of this now only once-removed world subtly suggest the discipline of the artist’s fantastic effacement. Rather than marking the presence of the artist, these boundaries are established by geometric patterns of squares and rectangles, tools of the architect who builds the lasting integrity of a hazy dream. These vestiges of formal systems provide a map to remember the dream. Only now can the sleepwalker be distanced from the sleepwalking... the viewer imprinted in and on the scene. One is there and yet is not totally aware of being present. One sees and remembers, but at the same time cannot remember exactly why or where. It is just from this ambiguity that Raul Diaz distills the symbolic relics of the personal and universal from a wider stream of unannounced concerns. For the measured step into these boats becomes a foothold for all sizes of those who have been there before, like ourselves, and those which may come after, like ourselves. Diaz reminds us that to remember is the act of the present which sets the present apart and yet unites the present with time. By sleeping slowly in his poetic vessels we just might find what we are looking for... and did not know to remember it.

But these vessels are not nostalgic barges of mourning which crisscross the waters of the Terra del Fuego. Nor are they blackened tugboats wearily yet relentlessly chugging to some nocturnal disappearance in the wilds of Patagonia. The sleep of reason here does not produce monsters. While we are not sure of the nature of the embarkation, somehow we sense that the sunlit shores are not prison facades; the gardens of rich foliage are not poisonous, the cascade is not the delusion of the deluge. Everything is connected when we sleep slowly here. We are what we remember and in remembering, exist. Leaves, trees, stilts, tables and boats for a moment form the frames of our remembering. Sleeping slowly, we hold briefly the different images, which contain the shadows of our lives and silhouette them in our dream windows. As a carpenter of moments of passage, Raul Diaz reconstructs a quiet vision of change and motion along shifting lines of family and landscape that offer ambiguity and uncertainty, but which remain centered and carefully measured and anchored. We reorient our lives with a remembered family history, which gives us place and direction. But Raul steers us about in an open boat through our own fantasies evoked by his own. His work is more poetry than prose. His cautiously tumbling nomads beckon us to join in the spiraling dance. With them we float easily above the claustrophobic line of strict, narrative sequence. Diaz conjures just enough for us to know where we sleepwalk. Our personal dreams are deftly balanced with the recognition that he and his family have been to these places. He throws us a loose rope to someone else’s dreams and voyages. Here we can sleep slowly and trust our dreams and his. The step is short from sleeping to waking on solid ground. Remember we were twice removed. As in Watteau’s early rococo painting, Pilgrimage to/ from Cythera , Time tugs at us to leave with the realization that leaving is a return to unbending boundary and the weight of time. But refreshed and reconnected we can now carry with us

Shaw Smith, Ph.D. Professor of Art Davidson College

LOS REMOS 2014 Carved and Painted Wood 20 1/2 x 6 1/2 x 25 3/4 inches

LA TABLA 2014 Mixed Media on Wood Panel 12 7/8 x 32 3/4 inches

BLANCO SOBRE BLANCO 2014 Mixed Media on Wood Panel 19 1/2 x 27 1/2 inches

EVENING VIGIL 2005-06 Mixed Media on Canvas 60 x 50 inches

THE HUNTER’S MOON 2005-06 Mixed Media on Canvas 50 x 72 inches LA NUBE 2014 Mixed M ia on W od Panel 39 1/4 x 51 1/8

CONTEMPLATION 2014 Painted Bronze 42 x 27 x 27 inches

CONTEMPLATION detail

APILADOS 2013 Mixed Media on Wood Panel 55 5/8 x 68 5/8 inches

EL LAGO 2013 Mixed Media on Wood Panel 55 1/2 x 68 1/2 inches

ATARDECER 2014 Mixed Media on Wood Panel 38 5/8 x 47 1/2 inches

EL CAMINO 2013 Mixed Media on Wood Panel 28 3/8 x 39 inches

LA BRUMA 2013 Mixed Media on Wood Panel 36 x 40 1/2 inches

PESCADOR 2014 Mixed Media on Wood Panel 32 5/8 x 40 1/2 inches

LA BÚSQUEDA 2014 Carved Wood 12 3/8 x 18 x 13 1/4 inches

LAGO BLANCO 2014 Mixed Media on Wood Panel 31 7/8 x 39 3/4 inches

LA RED 2014 Mixed Media on Wood Panel 39 1/4 x 51 inches

LAS PIEDRAS 2014 Mixed Media on Wood Panel 32 5/8 x 39 1/8 inches

LINEA DE HORIZONTE 2014 Mixed Media on Wood Panel 18 5/8 x 47 1/4 inches

BOTE LARGO 2014 Carved Wood 15 x 82 1/2 x 3 3/4 inches

BOTE LARGO Y CONO 2014 Carved Wood 19 1/2 x 85 3/4 x 6 1/2 inches

RELIEVE EN AMARILLO 2014 Mixed Media on Wood Panel 31 3/8 x 41 1/4 inches

EL LAGO 2014 Mixed Media on Wood Panel 47 3/4 x 63 7/8 inches

APILADOS 2009 Bronze 27 x 15 x 9 1/2 inches

EL LAGO 2 (LOS MOLINOS) 2013 Watercolor on Paper 22 x 30 3/8 inches

LOS MIMBRES (ARBOLES) 2013 Pastel on Paper 19 3/4 x 27 5/8 inches

LA BAHIA: LA PESCA ATARDECER 2013 Mixed Media on Paper 15 1/8 x 11 1/4 inches

BOTE Y FIGURA 2011 Carved and Painted Wood and Bronze 11 3/4 x 18 1/2 x 8 3/4 inches

FIGURA Y BOTE 2007 Carved and Painted Wood 60 x 72 x 16 inches

R A U L D I A Z

b. 1952, Córdoba, Argentina

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2015 Jerald Melberg Gallery, Charlotte, NC 2014 Tayloe Piggott Gallery, Jackson, WY 2011 Jerald Melberg Gallery, Charlotte, NC Tew Galleries, Atlanta, GA 2010 Museo Caraffa, Córdoba, Argentina 2008 Jerald Melberg Gallery, Charlotte, NC 2006 Arteamericas, Miami, FL Museo Spilimbergo, Unquillo, Argentina 2005 Jerald Melberg Gallery, Charlotte, NC Galerie Kreisler, Madrid, Spain

2002 Art Miami, Miami, FL

Jerald Melberg Gallery, Charlotte, NC Arte BA, Buenos Aires, Argentina

2001 Art Miami, Miami, FL

Waddington Tribby Fine Art, West Palm Beach, FL

2000 Jerald Melberg Gallery, Charleston, SC Jerald Melberg Gallery, Charlotte, NC Art Miami, Miami, FL Museo Spilimbergo, Córdoba, Argentina

Arte BA, Buenos Aires, Argentina Arte Contemporáneo, Argentina Córdoba Second Annual International Art Fair, Córdoba, Argentina 1999 Nexus Moderne Kunst, The Hague, The Netherlands Art Miami, Miami, FL Galerie de Arte Via Margutta, Córdoba, Argentina Over Studio, Torino, Italy 1998 Arte BA, Buenos Aires, Argentina Galerie de Arte Via Margutta, Córdoba, Argentina 1997 Jerald Melberg Gallery, Charlotte, NC Art Miami, Miami, FL Art BA, Buenos Aires, Argentina Galerie de Arte Via Margutta, Córdoba, Argentina

Nexus Moderne Kunst, The Hague, The Netherlands Museo de Artes Plasticas Eduardo Sivori, Buenos Aires, Argentina Art Miami, Miami Beach, FL Pan American Art Projects, Dallas, TX

2004 Art Chicago, Chicago, IL

Arte BA, Buenos Aires, Argentina 2003 Jerald Melberg Gallery, Charlotte, NC Art Miami, Miami, FL Art Chicago, Chicago, IL

Galerie Timothy Tew, Atlanta, GA Arte BA, Buenos Aires, Argentina

1996 Arte BA, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Published on the occasion of the exhibition

Genaro Perez Museum, Córdoba, Argentina Presidential Palace, Buenos Aires, Argentina

RAUL DIAZ Journey

Doctor Genaro Perez Museum, Córdoba, Argentina Galerie de Arte Via Margutta, Córdoba, Argentina 1995 Galerie de Arte Via Margutta, Córdoba, Argentina Arte BA, Buenos Aires, Argentina Suipacha Gallery, Buenos Aires, Argentina 1994 Suipacha Gallery, Buenos Aires, Argentina

January 17 - February 28, 2015

Jerald Melberg Gallery Inc. 625 South Sharon Amity Road Charlotte, NC 28211 704.365.3000 704.365.3016 Fax gallery@jeraldmelberg.com www.jeraldmelberg.com

SELECTED COLLECTIONS American Tire Distributors, Huntersville, NC Chesapeake Capital, Richmond, VA Dubuque Museum of Art, Dubuque, IA Hunton & Williams, Charlotte, NC Kilpatrick Stockton LLP, Charlotte, NC Linden Thomas and Company, Charlotte, NC Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, NC Moore Pediatric Dentistry, Charlotte, NC Moore & Van Allen, Charlotte, NC Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, CA Troutman Sanders LLP, Washington, DC

Photography by Christopher Clamp

Graphic Design by Gaybe Johnson Printed by Boingo Graphics

Publication Copyright © 2015 Jerald Melberg Gallery Inc. All Rights Reserved ISBN: 978-1-4951-3921-5

625 South Sharon Amity Road Charlotte, NC 28211 704.365.3000 gallery@jeraldmelberg.com www.jeraldmelberg.com