Cuenco Taino

                                         "Cuenco Taino"
                                         Oleo sobre lino
                                         9x14"
                                         2012


JORGE CHECO AND THE MAGIC OF EVERYDAY OBJECTS


By Gamal Michelén
Member of ADCA-AICA

Translated by Maximo Encarnacion



We live in a hallucinatory universe where we can experience the bleak sensation of positioning ourselves before the vastness of space with its galaxies and systems or place ourselves under the dark canopy we call sky and contemplate absorbedly a starry night. The same one that made Neruda feel that the absence of the beloved woman made her more immense; and also, we can marvel with the perfection of a rose, a snail, or the simple leaf of a herb like the one Whitmann baptized as “the child of creation.”

If we still keep the capacity of being amazed in spite of everyday tedium and the hurry that modern life imposes on us, we have to reach to the conclusion that God is an artist who has placed us in a spectacular creation and that he has given us the creative impetus that helps us to do what we call art. That is to say, the bungling that transcends what is utilitarian and delights itself in the spiritual pleasure of doing art for the sake of art.

Since ancient times, the elements of nature have been an inspiration for artists. That is why, in the Franco-Cantabrian zone, we find the richness of rupestrian paintings which, apart from the conjectures set forth about their motivations by the history of art critics, let us see an intelligent community full of that creative impetus and that represented their environment in those animals that provided them with leather for the cold weather and food for their subsistence.

Contemporary art, at times, is inspired in the creation that surrounds us, in those elements that belong in our everyday life like a rich source of materials that evolve into art. Not only the affirmation of Picasso, which states that we can never represent nature exactly the way it is, is true, but also that it becomes an excuse to make a composition. And a big part of the magic in painting lies in the placement of elements. For that reason, for Cezanne, an apple or an orange in a still life was just a motivation to place a circle. This way, he became the forerunner of cubism, which reduced the shapes to their simple geometry.

Musically speaking, an adequate composition makes sense when the sounds are arranged appropriately in tempo. That is why we do not call it noise, but music. Even in poetry, we dare to state that its magic lies more in the arrangement of words better than in the mere meaning.

When contemplating Jorge Checo's work, we expose ourselves to a painting of excellent invoicing with respect to its cleanliness, the perfection of the objects represented, and the care for the volumetry of objects; but above all this, the artist’s concern for the composition of the elements that constitute the painting calls our attention.

Objects of everyday use acquire a special value and become the suitable excuse when Checo places them creatively and with daring freedom on canvas, but at the same time, without disrupting the sense of harmony and balance, which makes the work produce emotional delight in the person who looks at it.

It seems as if a sort of complicity were produced among the fruits, tubers, containers, mantles, and baskets in order to engender a true work of art assembled with simple and everyday life themes such as a truncated cassava torte. In fact, this subject matter makes us observe a raggedly Dominican painting in which the artist is affected by what surrounds us daily, showing, this way, a sensibility towards those things that we see commonly, but that, all of a sudden, acquire a special value in those canvases. The artist attempts to stimulate us in the valuation of what we have, having us to reinterpret the world of the things that surround us and assigning them a special meaning.

In this artist’s painting, we perceive a special dedication in the harmonic combination of three elements: the lines, which provide sense of direction; the mass, which provides a sense of balance in the relationship of one element with the others; and the tones, which refer to the higher or lower luminosity of the objects that are represented. About this last element, we can point out his care for light, taking into consideration that it is a fundamental part in a well structured work.

We stay, then, as spectators before the challenge of contemplating these pieces and let an emotional alliance be established among the universes that dwell trapped in the mind of the artist and the visual judgment which is stimulated when Jorge Checo gives us the opportunity to expose ourselves to these excellent paintings.