The first thing one sees when entering the exhibition of paintings by Pablo Ferrer “Repetitions” is a text by the artist in which he reflects on the value of repetition as reiteration and repetition. What follows is an assortment of the same scenes depicted in different formats with only small variations. And yet, even when you look at very similar images several times, it’s never quite clear what happened; instead, the artist immerses his viewers in a typically suburban game of memory and mystery.
Ferrer’s paintings are figurative but not naturalistic. Shadows seep into light and faces are never detailed enough to be recognized. The most intriguing tableaux include a figure falling from a tree; people look into a hole whose contents we cannot see; a man threatens another with a brick; and wastelands and streets where the pouring rain gives us clues to the wintry scenery. All in all, the daily life of a typical bourgeois neighborhood in Santiago seems to have been disrupted by some sort of criminal act: has the brick found a victim, and is the hole destined to bury the body? ? Is the man who falls a horrified witness? Will these winter landscapes be affected by what happened, or will they remain cold and passive? There may be no mystery here, and it’s all nothing more than an excuse to show off Ferrer’s talent. In one of the largest paintings, the artist is shown fleeing the stage, bathed in a light that threatens to dissolve him.
Translated from Spanish by Michèle Faguet.
