Luís del Val
Luís del Val
On the other side
Whenever I see Jiménez Carrero’s paintings I remember Lewis Carroll’s Alice, because I feel a great desire to pass to the other side; not to the other side of the mirror, but to the other side of the painting, an inviting and suggestive portico that incites us to think that the painting is the painting of a painting through which we can access another world even more mysterious and incognito, more disturbing and disturbing.
Whenever I see Jiménez Carrero’s paintings I remember Lewis Carroll’s Alice, because I feel a great desire to pass to the other side; not to the other side of the mirror, but to the other side of the painting, an inviting and suggestive portico that incites us to think that the painting is the painting of a painting through which we can access another world even more mysterious and incognito, more disturbing and disturbing.
The exact realism of his brush, the masterful fidelity with which he captures the objects, is only an excuse through which the planes are superimposed and follow one another to incite us to wonder what will be behind, what will happen beyond the canvas. And it does not require too much imagination to know that a rabbit will not be waiting for us there, impatiently looking at his watch, but it is possible that an old friend who disappeared long ago, the yellowed letter of an old love, the impalpable trace of those presences that must remain on the surface of the tiles, on the paper of the walls, inside the closets and on the other side of Jiménez Carrero’s paintings, will be waiting for us there.
This attentive meticulousness, which in any other could be a cold technique, becomes the means used by the artist to disturb our pretended arrogance that believes to know reality.
Whenever I see Jiménez Carrero’s paintings I remember Lewis Carroll’s Alice, because I feel a great desire to pass to the other side; not to the other side of the mirror, but to the other side of the painting, an inviting and suggestive portico that incites us to think that the painting is the painting of a painting through which we can access another world even more mysterious and incognito, more disturbing and disturbing.
The exact realism of his brush, the masterful fidelity with which he captures the objects, is only an excuse through which the planes are superimposed and follow one another to incite us to wonder what will be behind, what will happen beyond the canvas. And it does not require too much imagination to know that a rabbit will not be waiting for us there, impatiently looking at his watch, but it is possible that an old friend who disappeared long ago, the yellowed letter of an old love, the impalpable trace of those presences that must remain on the surface of the tiles, on the paper of the walls, inside the closets and on the other side of Jiménez Carrero’s paintings, will be waiting for us there.
This attentive meticulousness, which in any other could be a cold technique, becomes the means used by the artist to disturb our pretended arrogance that believes to know reality.
First, it sets traps for us, traps for the eye that thinks it is accurate. Then, when it has already shown us that it can deceive us, that the sense of sight that we thought infallible is wrong, it unsettles us by dividing the space into delicate slices through which we arrive at that question that gnaws at us and forces us to ask ourselves what lies beyond the painting.
When you enter Jiménez Carrero’s world, geometry falters and Euclid is no more than a distant reference. And even time, the fourth dimension, that convention we men have given ourselves to avoid vertigo, seems trapped, as if the painter needed not only space, but also memories and memory.
And that’s why you find shades of melancholy, bits and pieces of nostalgia that the artist grazes with unusual familiarity, such as if
Whenever I see Jiménez Carrero’s paintings I remember Lewis Carroll’s Alice, because I feel a great desire to pass to the other side; not to the other side of the mirror, but to the other side of the painting, an inviting and suggestive portico that incites us to think that the painting is the painting of a painting through which we can access another world even more mysterious and incognito, more disturbing and disturbing.
The exact realism of his brush, the masterful fidelity with which he captures the objects, is only an excuse through which the planes are superimposed and follow one another to incite us to wonder what will be behind, what will happen beyond the canvas. And it does not require too much imagination to know that a rabbit will not be waiting for us there, impatiently looking at his watch, but it is possible that an old friend who disappeared long ago, the yellowed letter of an old love, the impalpable trace of those presences that must remain on the surface of the tiles, on the paper of the walls, inside the closets and on the other side of Jiménez Carrero’s paintings, will be waiting for us there.
This attentive meticulousness, which in any other could be a cold technique, becomes the means used by the artist to disturb our pretended arrogance that believes to know reality.
First, it sets traps for us, traps for the eye that thinks it is accurate. Then, when it has already shown us that it can deceive us, that the sense of sight that we thought infallible is wrong, it unsettles us by dividing the space into delicate slices through which we arrive at that question that gnaws at us and forces us to ask ourselves what lies beyond the painting.
When you enter Jiménez Carrero’s world, geometry falters and Euclid is no more than a distant reference. And even time, the fourth dimension, that convention we men have given ourselves to avoid vertigo, seems trapped, as if the painter needed not only space, but also memories and memory.
And that is the reason why you find shades of melancholy, remnants of nostalgia that the artist shepherds with unusual familiarity, as if he were used to stroll through the past, stopped at some specific time and incorporated it into his work with that naturalness that sorcerers have in their magical offices. Time stopped like a colored butterfly and pinned to the canvas. Time scattered in the face of that doll, in the jacket of a bullfighter, in the polished and shiny surface of the tile, in an old book. An elusive, fleeting, mysterious time, which Jiménez Carrero captures with naturalness and which stimulates us, transforms us, makes us more curious, more Alicias than ever to try to pass to the other side of the mirror, believing that from realism we will pass to surrealism, falling into the trap that with fine subtlety, with consummate creativity, the artist has set for us.
The dismay will haunt us, to the point that it will be difficult to forget. And when, after a period of time, we return to his painting, we will become curious to know what is on the other side. This time with less impatience and equal interest, with less nervousness but similar uneasiness, because we are sure that in the paintings of Enrique Jiménez Carrero a talisman is kept, a secret is enclosed.
Luís del Val
Journalist and Writer