ARTURO SERRANO
Art is a question of emotions not of rational principles. Over a decade involved in Zen Buddhism, Arturo Serrano creates a visual dialogue merging gestural improvisation with the act of painting. He consolidates art by finding relations between form and space without preconceived ideas. Nontraditional landscapes, blurred figures and strange portraits are his personal subjects.
TECHNIQUES
In regard to the techniques in my paintings I usually work in mixed media either on paper or canvas. A dialogue with the act of painting is essential to me, working with certain types of music that create a mood in the studio, contemporary classical or neotonalism strive for open spaces and landscape which are meaningful to me in a world of big cities and claustrophobic noise. As an artist involved with Zen Buddhism for many years, gestural improvisation is essential without preconceived ideas. Each drawing or painting must come by itself without difficulty or disarray.
THEMES
I´m interested in relationships between form and space, form can be a figure that usually appears and disappears simultaneously. Also landscape is usually very important to me, not as a traditional landscape naturalistic painter but instead as some kind of unusual force that impels meaning. Curiosity, surprise, the unexpected is when a drawing or a painting is really talking or saying something to me that I want to share with the viewer. Art is a question of emotions not of rational principles. I also like drawing and painting portraits once in a while. Human faces become a mirror of life and individual choices when you look at them carefully as an artist.
CRITICAL REVIEWS
Looking at the paintings of Arturo Serrano means disclosing a new space of mysticism
in an era of superficial languages. Its the meaning of the work of a painter who has been searching through a personal process towards the significance of line, texture and color. This relationships finally open themselves for the viewer to find the clue, a dialogue with the image and the act of painting.
Ana María Lozano
Art curator, Museum of Modern Art, Bogota - Colombia.
Abstractionism in the drawings and paintings of Arturo Serrano point towards dramatic freedom and mystery beyond words. Gestural abstraction through a restricted palette is a way of creating atmospheres that could operate as landscapes or blurred figures without a sense of time. Esthetics of destruction and recreation where form is reality and the possibility of contemplation.
Germán Sánchez Pardo
Author, Art Critic, Editorial Planeta, Bogota - Colombia.