Red #2 Teahupoo, 2010

Watercolor on paper
50 x 70 cm

Teahupoo, -a world-renowned surfing location in the island of Tahitii, that gives name also to one of the fiercest waves in the world, unique for its shape and for the massive volume of water it lifts-, was the title of a group of drawings of different formats and techniques shown in a solo exhibition held at ProjecteSD gallery in 2010 with the same title (see Exhibitions). The toponym refers to an existing yet imaginary place, that gave rise to a constellation of images, real and fictional.
Teahupoo symbolizes the distance between idealization and real experience, between what is close and familiar and that remote and unknown, and the possibility or impossibility to express this distance through image. Accurate subtle graphite lines blend with colourful watercolors maybe evocative of the exuberant tropical vegetation or the intense light of the afternoon. Biomorphic traces and eliptically shaped images contrapose to gridded linear constructions. References to natural elements mix with allusions to the cinematographic medium. Clouds, atmospheres, waves or undefined places co-live in this non-hierarchical composition were associations are not delimited. Regardless of their fragmented presentation, all drawings are part of one same idea. The idea of process and of a “not-completed”, “not-finished” work is evidenced in all the drawings as well as the idea of non-linearity, multiplicity and accumulation.