FIDEL SCLAVO: RECENT WORK
April 18 to May 31, 2024
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The form – Fidel Sclavo seems to whisper – is learned and unlearned, alternately and successively. It’s his specifications. It is the story of form, illustrated but free of text. It offers, among other things, a theme: the power of the simple form, its honesty. Sclavo for example, resorts to a rectangle to expose black, to give it away. Or he proposes a black both escorted and challenged by whites and grays. Or, under one of the paintings with the darkest surface, he suggests something not erased but covered, half disapproved by its author. The hand of a painter can be seen in the pleasant irregularity of a color. White circles, deliberately and delicately imperfect, on a bursting yellow (it is its function in the palette). Sclavo is aware that, used well, yellow can do anything. Meanwhile, the risk pretends not to be. (Risk sometimes has the behavior of irony, and its secret is not being able to guess the intention). This kind of provocation is that of an undaunted strategist standing guard alongside a greedily reduced color palette. We are facing definitive tests. Tastefully outlined lyricism. In its simplicity, the abstract in Sclavo suggests not a figure but a guiding spirit. Here the decorative – if we choose such a dubious term – aspires to a sober metaphysical quality. To transcend, precisely. Hence he sees it as contained.
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It will surprise no one, then, that Fidel Sclavo is a shy draughtsman. And shy people tend to be formal; and the colors exploit his withdrawal. These paintings have a clear sense of tenuity, but they are not evanescent. (That which is tenuous can deceive -because it is scarce, because it is subtle-, just as what is profuse can do so for the opposite reason). We will see – these are not descriptions; They are promises – a letter with beautifully disparate lines, addressed to a Sarah who can be assumed to be the painter Sarah Grilo. But the letter from a timid person, logically, does not have a signature. In another piece he repeats Sarah’s name in his own autographs, so to speak, in a gradient that travels from the almost invisible to practically convinced graphite. Another statement. A short calligraphic mantra. Not far away, an approach to the pinkish once again provides a painting that is and is not there.
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It is a sample so secretive that it could be titled “barely.” Collages barely are. Things and colors barely touch each other, they peek out slightly. Therefore, white abounds. The blank canvas in Sclavo’s work is there not to be invaded but to lurk around. The artist confirms, in any case, that white can also convey discomfort (necessary to continue exploring, as a painter or spectator). That is to say, we are facing a placidity that does not want to be indulgent. Fidel Sclavo has not come to verify anything; rather to surrender, gently, neatly, to a momentary destabilization of expectations. Perhaps he longs – like an oriental – to clarify, in the midst of a current situation so sold to the ease of extremes.
MatÃas Serra Bradford