TATIANA MONTOYA: SUPPORT AS THE ORIGIN OF THE PICTORIAL

By: Raquel Tibol

Born in Medellin, Colombia in 1961, Tatiana Montoya has lived in Mexico since 1993 due to the fact that she won an artistic production scholarship grant in 1991. The grant brought her to the City of Mexico at the same time that Manuel Camacho Solis was governing. The Latin American artists arrived from many different countries and they worked in different places. Some of them remained in Mexico City, and others went to Queretaro. Tatiana Montoya requested to make ceramics in the workshop of Hugo X. Velasquez in Cuernavaca.

The invitation was for 60 days. However, attracted by the Mexican cultural environment, she stayed 5 months, with time enough to prepare for an exhibition in the Pecanins Gallery based on the themes of wheels, bicycles and tricycles. Her chosen technique was to assemble metal scraps and concrete, with a graceful sense of humor.

Initially dedicated to dance, she changed her direction in 1983 when she enrolled in the Research Institute of Colombian Expression in Bogota, and attended art workshops in ceramics, lithography and engraving; at the Jorge Tadeo Lozano University of Bogota, she continued with courses in history and art appreciation. In 1992, she had two remarkable international participations at the “Mud of America” exhibition at the Sofia Imber Museum of Art, Caracus, Venezuela, and in the parallel exhibition, “Meeting with the Others”, at the 9th documental of Kassel, Germany, organized by a team from Stoffwechsel University with projects coming from Asia, Africa and Latin America. In 1995, she received an honor mention at the First International Biennial of Art Objects Toys, presented at the Jose Luis Cuevas Museum, Mexico City, and in 1997 in the first Johnnie Walker painting competition, organized by the Modern Art Museum of Chapultepec Park, Mexico City.

On July 14 in the Bosques de las Lomas art gallery of Arcos Itatti, Tatiana Montoya showed the exhibition titled, Catharsis integrated by triptycs, diptycs and particular pieces. The title referred more to her dominant psychic state of how she worked the eleven large format pieces than to the process of their elaboration. The patience that is deposited in her difficult configuration, allows her to eliminate harmful tensionswhich provoke her to reach an active and contemplative purification of spiritual harmony.

If abstraction is that which emancipated itself from matter, the current works of Tatiana Montoya would not be classified as abstractions, because of the complex technical process that defines their aesthetic reason. In order to give existence to these intangible paintings, she interrupts the constant support of the binomial chromatic and obtains strange and iridescent colorations upon attacking the thin sheets of iron or aluminum with acids for oxidation. The planned physical, chemical reaction, including some additional accidental effects exposed to the elements of wind, water, some random particles and emissions of real and man-made acid rain water, and extreme changes of temperature.

The corrosion is accumulated and must be watched over, so that it does not eat away at the sheets, but that it adds ranges of deafeningly shiny colors of greens, ochres, blacks, blues, grays, reds and golds that resemble the first and the last light of the day. Also added are different thicknesses of textures, expressively charged as well as velvety warm hues. And all this is obtained without the usual painting instruments; a different artistic laboratory.

Tatiana Montoya has experienced with guarded patient, the allowance for chance and time, recognizing more each time that the chemical fusion of the nitrates of bronze or copper, the iron acids, of the timely varnishes in programmed stages. The task is complicated as Tatiana Montoya achieves rusty surface with wisely dosed nitrates; the sheets of aluminum metal leaf that are supposedly unable to be oxidized.

Her handling depends on the course of the days and the minute of reactions which allows the extensión of inflexious repertoires and perceptible modulations. Here, the automatisms or the material happenings are not worthy because the act of painting has been replaced by another type of visual task. There is a dynamic plasming, but, ruled by another temporary ryhthm. Sometimes its the substance of the material, other times the instruments, accomplishing very different results.

Special attention is given to the reflecting effects of the optical phenomenon with the intervening observer. The changable images seemed not to have a beginning or an end. In fact, the rythmic and deceptive illusions convert into renewed versions of lyric abstraction.

By her experimentation with the technique and the aesthetic, Tatiana Montoya contributes new posibilities to the poetic association of the visible.

Raquel Tibol was born in Argentina in 1923, and became a naturalized Mexican in 1961. As an Art Critic, she studied at the University of Buenos Aires. In 1953, she came to México to be the secretary to Diego Rivera. She has been a museum organizar and juror of art competitions in México and many other countries. Her work has been translated in more than 6 languages.

Author:

Raquel Tibol