Manolo Oyonarte

OYONARTE. BASIC AESTHETIC IDEAS

Living beings have not evolved to perceive the world as it truly is, but rather according to their survival needs as a species. Among the countless sensory stimuli they receive, they select those aligned with these goals, so their representation of the world best serves their vital interests. Humans, moreover, have a need for global understanding. Abstract art arises as the culmination of the avant-garde’s desire to perceive things as they really are—what Kant called “things-in-themselves”—as opposed to the false or incomplete way we usually see them. For the philosopher, human beings construct an intellectual representation of the world, bound by space and time, and through reason, we obscure the true nature of things.

From these considerations arise the aesthetic ideas reflected in my doctoral thesis The Concept of Objectivity in the Work of Art. The Bipolar Objectivism of Jorge Oteiza, a research project I conducted between 2009 and 2015. In this thesis, I systematize the model of perceptive aesthetic experience initiated by Kant through the unveiling of the elusive thing-in-itself—what things truly are—later deepened by Schopenhauer, who emphasized the experience of the thing itself (suggesting that using the body as an aesthetic tool avoids the falsehood of intellectual representation), and finally refined by Adorno, with his brilliant insight that in an authentic artwork, what it represents coincides with what it is.

I also propose a new model of creative aesthetic experience, which I consider the greatest contribution of my research. In this model, true access to art requires the artist to set aside their EGO (reason and emotion) and surrender, from infinite freedom, to being infinitely a servant of what is emerging in the creation process. Attempting to control what happens, or intervening rationally or emotionally, results only in a subjective reflection of the artist—no matter how technically accomplished the work may be. Working from subjectivity distances the work from objectivity, from the universality necessary to become a meaningful work of art.

The thesis represented a necessary reflection to enable the evolutionary step my artistic process required. After thirty years of exploring my unconscious for the essential elements of my expressive language, I managed to build an imagery I could identify as truly mine. However, achieving this did not lead to works that gave me the aesthetic awe I sensed was possible. My subjective path had reached a dead end—from my ego, I could not access the deeper, the universal, which I believed was where art resided.

Fortunately, the gods are merciful. On this subjective journey into the self of the artist, fragments of what belongs to art itself began to attach to the work—shreds of objectivity producing flashes of universality. With a deeper understanding of the artistic process, my steps toward the essence of art grew larger. The intuitions from my first 30 years of artistic inquiry became certainties in the last seven. Realizing that neither reason nor emotion belong in the aesthetic experience silenced any lingering ego. I learned to let myself flow, intervening as little as possible in the plastic alchemy, and this is reflected in the work I've produced in recent years.

The path I now travel is visible in the series Mundear and Caminando en lo impensable, where subjective elements still dominate—visible in characters, symbols, letters, and numbers floating in a whitish ether. Oyonarte is still very present in them. Then come Desde lo innombrable and Lethal Harmony, where the boundary of subjectivity is near—a limit reached in Pensando lo impensable and the early works of Zapadores Red Hell, Yellow Dancer, and Pegaso, and in the triptych Guardians of the Galaxy, which is part of the collection of the 21st Century Museum at Zapadores Ciudad del Arte, where figurative traces remain.

Later, Hegel teaches us that at the limit of subjectivity lies objectivity. What belongs to art itself takes the lead in the work. The journey toward universality is embodied in fully abstract works that no longer narrate anything nor contain emotional projections. I become a privileged witness to the flow of what I share in common with other human beings.

Oyonarte, April 2022.