Che Guevara (2015)

The print as an artistic materiality translates the experiential and above all existential depth of any of the works into a critical register, the one so familiar to the hermeneutic exercises that began with the second half of the 20th century. What distinguishes Vîrtosu's art precisely, namely the intrinsic value, the beautiful-in-itself felt as erstwhile – when art was sufficient for itself, adapts to the chaotically dissipated contemporary through a connected sublimation sui-generis – the living energy, that of living life, creates a secondary course that nevertheless feeds the need for the existence of the theoretical commentary, but in a completely separate coding, as it is actually necessary. The print therefore complements the composition of paints through its flatness, renouncing the authorization of abuses generated by the presence of a textuality assumed as an integral part. He exists as an autonomous, sufficient and necessary entity. Once recomposed, this new art object provides context to the viewer who wishes to exercise their theoretical eye. The surface bears the chiseled edge of discourses sliding in various directions. Thus, the subject, and implicitly the background, becomes the main coordinate of an innocent pleasure.

Che Guevara, prototype of freedom and beginnings, “new” at least in appearance, cropped and re-sampled in a well-defined visual structure, learns and at the same time transmits familiarity to the people through a kind of being amongst people and also due to the ideological spell that passes from hand to hand or from one wall to another as the canvas becomes a poster and a graffiti work, respectively. Vîrtosu breaks down the idol of the masses without wanting to intervene politically. Contact with the inherent need to assemble a face gives respite to the automatisms of being, and only then does the present have time to form and not to appear. The vividness of feeling becomes the vividness of thought in a pulsating chromatic ensemble. The intensity of the colors and the penumbra created doubles the patriotic feeling that hovered over the Cuban island around the 1950s, disrupting the utopian promises that darken even our present. A manifesto of awakening that, by itself, evades a dreaminess so familiar to us.

Uncurling from the center of Che Guevara, the dizzying vortex of dark and bright red and its curve around the outlines of a primal visage reveals the strength and confidence of Vîrtosu's line. From within their density, two eyes command the viewer’s singular focus with a mesmerizing intensity, drawing the gaze towards a tantalizing, unattainable core.

The canvas, “Che Guevara” (2015), even more intense than the viewing of the print version, continues the investigation of pictorial and spatial traditions initiated in Vîrtosu’s earlier works, a widely acclaimed series of “Great World Personalities” paintings; exquisitely precise, the artwork employs the motif of the radiant band to undermine traditional notions of pictorial space, subtly exposing the limitations of classical perspective by exploiting its essential structure. Vîrtosu’s juxtaposition disrupts the viewer’s perception, producing a gripping illusion that hovers between the sobering flatness and the hallucinogenic experience of its optical effects. Bursting forth from the fastidiously ordered chrysalis of its predecessors, Che Guevara explodes outward from the fundamental perspectival structure, devouring the picture plane in its denser, braver, and wildly variegated expressionistic surface. The commanding presence of Che Guevara comes not only from the sumptuous physicality, but from the undeniable intensity of the gesture by which it was created. Moving the viewer’s gaze through the sinuous topography of vectored lines, the work both revels in and contradicts its own three-dimensionality: while offering the illusion of perspectival depth in the thicket of sinewy impasto and clandestine face, the ever-present intimation of semi abstraction returns us to the two-dimensional reality of the picture plane, exposing the intricacies and idiosyncrasies of pictorial space with unprecedented painterly finesse.