April-May 2025

Hi Eric.

I’m writing you these letters, which will be public, to celebrate the ten years of our project, El Cuarto de los Ojos Sucios, dedicated to exhibiting, discussing, enjoying and thinking about contemporary painting in Mexico. I thank you very much for this alliance, for the joy and the complicity. Without a doubt, this has been one of the fiercest things that has happened to me.

The problem I would like to introduce is whether or not it’s possible to strip painting of its contemplative function.

Following Walter Benjamin in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, the value of a work of art has as its condition of possibility its exhibition value. It seems we have assumed that paintings are hung on walls—of the museum, of our homes, of the city (thinking of graffiti)—to be contemplated. While this contemplation seems potent to me—I read it as the possibility of generating a collective delirium that doesn't reach psychotic break levels and that doesn't endanger anyone—lately I have wondered if painting can have another use value other than just that of contemplation.

To narrow down this idea, I will lay out some quotes from Kant's Critique of Judgment, specifically those where he speaks of contemplation (the emphasis is mine).

* When the question is if a thing is beautiful, we do not want to know whether anything depends or can depend on the existence of the thing either for myself or for anyone else, but how we judge it by mere observation (intuition or reflection).

* But this contemplation itself is not directed to concepts; for the judgment of taste is not a cognitive judgment (either theoretical or practical), and thus is not based on concepts, nor has it concepts as its purpose.

*We remain fixed on the contemplation of the beautiful, because this contemplation strengthens and reproduces itself; which is analogous (though not of the same kind as) that lingering which takes place when a [physical] charm in the representation of the object repeatedly arouses the attention, the mind being passive.

* In the judging of a free beauty (according to the mere form) the judgment of taste is pure. There is presupposed no concept of any purpose, for which the manifold should serve the given Object, and which therefore is to be represented therein. By such a concept the freedom of the Imagination which disports itself in the contemplation of the figure would be only limited.

(((While I gather these quotes, like ripe and sweet fruits in the forest, Constanza, Adriana and Marisol with whom I share the table, also write; the fire is about to go out and it has begun to rain. We drink wine. History sometimes repeats itself not as farce, but as ethics of inhabited space)))

* Now the satisfaction in the manifold of a thing in reference to the internal purpose which determines its possibility is a satisfaction grounded on a concept; but the satisfaction in beauty is such as presupposes no concept, but is immediately bound up with the representation through which the object is given (not through which it is thought).

* The mind feels itself moved in the representation of the Sublime in nature; whilst in aesthetical judgments about the Beautiful it is in restful contemplation.

* But…I maintain that to take an immediate interest in the Beauty of Nature (not merely to have taste in judging it) is always a mark of a good soul; and that when this interest is habitual it at least indicates a frame of mind favourable to the moral feeling, if it is voluntarily bound up with the contemplation of nature.

* in all beautiful art the essential thing is the form, which is purposive as regards our observation and judgment, where the pleasure is at the same time cultivation and disposes the spirit to Ideas, and consequently makes it susceptible of still more of such pleasure and entertainment.

In these quotes we can notice how Kant speaks of the contemplation of beauty as that which reproduces itself from intuition, which is not linked to a concept, which has no finality, which entails a certain tranquility, a certain pleasure and a certain disposition to moral feeling.

Dearest Eric, I feel that painting’s use value has much more potential for exhibition, relation and presence than mere contemplation.

I think of the pigmented rooms that Katharina Grosse invents for us to move through—because yes, a painting can also be traversed—; I think of Ana Mendieta sliding her hands up and down the canvas, like a feline; and of the choreographies that became Joan Mitchell’s paintings. All that energy, all that movement, all that force would have to have a mode of exhibition that doesn't reduce itself to the white wall: the contemplation of beauty, with its black hole: the deciphering of the sign.

What do you think? Are you interested in talking about this?

Hugs,

S.

Hi Sandra.

Thank you very much for your complicity and trust in the project of El Cuarto de los Ojos Sucios. This exchange of ideas excites me.

I remember something of the critique of Enlightenment aesthetics that Terry Eagleton makes in The Ideology of the Aesthetic. Paraphrasing: that what seems "natural" in this thinking (like that which we would call beautiful, for example) (or couldn't we even include here all concepts that claim to be universal?), hides a complex ideological framework whose purpose is to produce a certain type of sensibility. That is, this type of conceptualization of aesthetics is a technology of subjectification.

More than refuting Kant 🙈, I would like to propose that each painting is a complex machine that bets on a certain type of relationship with the viewer, with the wall, with the history of the medium, or even with visuality itself. And that, at the same time, the production of painting is accompanied by criticism, which works to point out (or conceal, depending on its inevitable bias) these frameworks.

Returning to your reference to Benjamin, perhaps the link between painting’s exhibition value and the white cube seems inevitable. I think about how many Malevich exhibitions recreate the order of works as they were originally presented in 0.10. Especially in relation to the corner where a version of Black Square on White Background was placed... as if that corner were part of the work (I say it is!).

At the same time, it seems to me that your observation points to the relationship between the white cube and the exercise of contemplating painting in a Kantian mode. Could it be that insisting on this relationship between painting and this specific mode of exhibition ignores the arduous work of institutional critique in showing the exercises of power that the white cube implies?

I share the feeling that Benjamin, by differentiating the various dimensions in which the same work of art participates, allows us to abstract its use value/s (we’ll have to be careful that this abstraction process doesn’t make its other dimensions invisible, if they’re relevant, in each case). I equally share the idea that “painting’s use value has much more potencial for exhibition, relation and presence than mere contemplation," as you say.

Returning to your idea of painting as a stimulator for "the possibility of generating a collective delirium." Donna Haraway says in The Companion Species Manifesto that there are "ways [of mattering] that could only be read with the tripping[1] proper to any semiotic practice, linguistic or not." And I think, first, of Deleuze and Guattari's a-signifying semiotics, which proposes a way of transmitting affects that bypass the black hole entirely. But there's also the political dimension of thinking about all semiotics as collective hallucination/delirium—a recognition that while exposing the artificiality of hegemonic semiotics, creates space for producing new ones, or reactivating others, that allow these irreducible affects to flow freely, unbound by sign or power.

How do you see it?

Hugs!

E.

[1] In the Spanish translation, “tripping” is translated as alucinación (hallucination).

Hello, Eric

I really like the idea of "ways [of mattering] that could only be read with the tripping[1] proper to any semiotic practice, linguistic or not."

I think Haraway's proposal opens space to consider that any type of communication already implies a hallucination. The artificial quality of articulation sidesteps essentialism while creating possibilities for conjuring other ways of fostering shared hallucination. A vitalism of both difference and presence.

Today I did a curatorial accompaniment. An artist told me about a piece where several people improvise from a place of disagreement. I think there's a clue there.

I also think of Fidel López's idea of paying attention not only to the facade of the main street, but to all the flows that occur in the adjacent street.

I’d like to propose to you, as a kind of game, some ideas for exhibiting painting.

(We've already talked about this) Convene a one-day exhibition in the forest. Invite friends and strangers. Install a giant painting—a blanket on the grass—and spend time together there. The other paintings would be leaning against tree trunks, on the ground—facing the sky, among the branches, etc. We’d share bread that tastes like forest; mezcal and coffee.

[1] In the Spanish translation, “tripping” is translated as alucinación (hallucination).

Thinking both about the affects produced by journeys in the city and situationist psychogeography, organize a walk from point A to point B where each painter takes their work out for a stroll: walking with it and alongside others.

Make paintings on large pieces of papers and stick them up with wheatpaste in public spaces, the way protest posters and advertising are pasted up.

Hang a painting on your back, like a backpack. Go out for a walk with it. Enter the supermarket as well as the museum, a friend's house as well as the bank. Stand still from time to time so people can look at it.

Gather around a painting as around a fire 😉.

What if action and contemplation happen at the same time? Is it possible to make both temporalities run parallel toward a certain direction? Maybe Olafur Eliasson's The Weather Project had something of this: office workers from around the Tate going to the museum to eat their lunch in front of an artificial sun. Shared hallucinations.

Shall we go for Pad thai?

Hugs,

S.

Hello, Sandra.

How exciting to take paintings for walks. In these exhibition forms you propose, do you imagine that any painting at all can be shown? Or does it have to be one made specifically for them? Is there any historical work that you would especially like to lean against a tree or use as a backpack?

Maybe each painter imagines, consciously or not, an ideal wall or installation, or lighting for their works. Perhaps the white cube is a pretext for the wall, and the wall in turn a pretext for verticality. Verticality and height as a victory against gravity.

A note on the idea of contemplation:
1,000 hours of staring (1992-97) by Tom Friedman.

Do you remember the theory that our friend C had about Richard Dadd's painting The Fairy Feller's Master Stroke? That the blade of the axe, which isn't painted but is a gap that reveals the bare canvas, functions as an aberration within the painting's narrative. According to this theory, the axe threatens to break not only the hazelnut on the ground, but the very "consistency" of the world contained in the canvas (as if the axe were a kind of Lacanian real?). This operation of leaving the canvas bare is more or less common in painting history. I think that in some cases it's as if the artist grafted a bit of wall into their works. Like in the gaps between the black stripes in Frank Stella's Black Paintings series, or the unpainted areas in Katharina Grosse's paintings.

I write this with the intention of circling the problem of the relationship between painting and the place of the exhibition. I want to propose that if the white cube is institutional, then perhaps the wall—and certainly verticality, that spatial vector painting immediately engages—are elements that must be interrogated anew each time.

(Yes, we went for Pad Thai!)

E.

Hi Eric.

I.

Yesterday I finished the course on 20th Century Art History with my students by reviewing On the Total Installation by Ilya Kabakov. Suddenly I thought, how many times has the problem of the white cube, contemplation and verticality already been circled around? Maybe it's not about how many times the same question is asked, but how each answer is declined.

I like that you think of the painting-on-wall as a challenge to gravity. (Challenge to Gravity could be the title and curatorial line of an exhibition, we should do it). Maybe deep down what I'm looking for isn’t to challenge gravity, but to have my feet on the ground: to sustain a relationship with the ground I walk on and its ecosystem.

I was recently looking through Lulu’s archive (I miss Lulu). In 2018, as part of Choque Cultural (Cultural Shock), Frieda Toranzo Jaeger presented a large format painting leaning against the wall on a mint green floor. It was still the white cube, yet it was also another place. A place where that painting was not only looked at but felt with the whole body.

I think the effect comes from the tension between the size of the painting and the space that contains it: it's not there to adorn the wall or teach us something, but to be present. A bit like Marina Abramović's The artist is present (2010). That presence, however, stems not only from playing with scale, but also from the mint green reflecting and subtly dispersing across the walls—an almost invisible atmosphere that generates a pulse.

Maybe my weariness with the white cube reflects a vital urge to conspire against the circulation of ourselves and artworks as mere that gather symbolic surplus value to be exchanged.

Quizá mi hartazgo del cubo blanco sea una necesidad vital de conspirar contra nuestra circulación y las de las obras de arte sólo como mercancías que se llenan de plusvalor simbólico para ser intercambiadas. 

II.

I really like that we both feel desire for painting. Because desiring means not taking the situation for granted.

In his conversation titled Gilles Deleuze: From A to Z, with Claire Parnet <3, Gilles Deleuze says:

GD: There is no desire that does not flow, I mean this precisely - flow within an assemblage (agencement).

To desire is to construct an assemblage, to construct a set, the set of a skirt, of a ray of sun. Of a woman. Of a street. And that. The assemblage of a woman, of a landscape.

CP: Of a color

GD: Of a color, that’s what desire is. It's constructing an assemblage, constructing a region, really, to assemble (agencer).

Desiring painting entails considering the assemblages and regions in which it is situated. You ask me: Is there any historical work that you would especially like to lean against a tree or use as a backpack? The paintings we love.

Hugs,

S.

Hi Sandra.

I agree with the points you mention. I find it interesting to think about the desire for painting, which I also understand as a disposition toward affect, toward being affected.

Your comment about Frieda Toranzo Jaeger's work that was exhibited at Lulú gallery reminds me of Didi-Huberman's account of the annunciation that Fra Angelico painted in his cell in the convent of San Marcos, and how it related in very complex and subtle ways to the space. And that while Fra Angelico had used resources that exceeded the painting’s frame (like the journey of the body of the visitor, the whiteness of the wall, the path of natural light, etc.), this was treated less as a problematization of the medium than as a way of producing a presence.

I recently saw a video of kittens on Instagram that clarified a passage from Painting and the Question of Concepts, and I think it's somewhat relevant—or maybe not, but I'll share it anyway, for the meows. In this lecture, Deleuze takes up Bateson's concept of the "mu" function, which would be something like an analogical signal that expresses relationships of dependency. When the cat meows in the morning, Bateson reflects, it doesn't say "milk, milk," it says: "dependency, dependency, I depend on you." Returning to Deleuze: there are three positions of the diagram in painting, which depend on how a code is inserted into an analogical flow: abstraction, when the code takes predominance; abstract expressionism, when the analogical flow is occupied only minimally by the code; and the "figural," when the relationship is "tempered," and they give rise to a non-figurative figure—which he also calls presence. In the video I mentioned, the kitten Merv vocalizes "Bagagwa," to which his guardians respond: "Merv, don't invoke Bagagwa!" In other videos from the same account, other identical invocations occur. In this way, Merv is not only capable of expressing relationships of dependency, but manages to produce and graft a new code into the analogical flow of the "mu" function. Thanks to Merv, Bagagwa now exists: he made it present.

It excites me to think that technique, exhibition space, "expanded" resources, the images that appear in it, even (and fundamentally) our desire, are fragments of the invocation in which we participate to make painting produce presence.

Meow

E.

Hi Eric.

Knowing about Bagagwa makes me happy, not only because kittens are the best, but because it makes sense to me to continue in art—and in life—by conjuring presence.

Elaborating traces, inscriptions and meanings from the shared desire of a collective hallucination. Attending to what is produced. Making assemblages through these presences. Declaring ourselves anti-fascist.

Loving, caring for and inventing ourselves from and with art.

We make paintings, write texts and spend time together to invoke our own version of Bagagwa. Not from a moral point of view, but from an ethics that keeps reconfiguring affiliations.

I value contemplation as a co-production of the piece, but I feel it's only a small part of what can be fostered around it.

I feel that a contemporary Marxist has no use for nostalgia. It's not that I want us to return to the caves of Altamira, I want us to update painting as a presence that doesn't only respond to the economy of the vectoralist class, formerly called bourgeoisie. Although their presupposition (invention) of the indigenous and its relationship to the nation-state is problematic, I think the Mexican muralists also wanted that: a painting that wouldn't contribute to the mannerisms of whiteness.

Like Walter Benjamin, in The Arcades Project, I enjoy seeing graffiti on the street and think of them as paintings: trace without institution. When I see the skaters, in front of the El Eco museum near my house, I sometimes think of painting. Not the hand-brush relationship, but the whole body on the skateboard trying to make the asphalt a space that appears between each slide, jump—and fall.

I want to share here what our friend Christian Camacho answered when we asked him why he continued to think of his work as painting (he sank a painting on canvas into an Olympic-sized swimming pool), and not as installation. I liked that his response was that the epistemological and sensitive framework with which he resolved the problem was first and foremost pictorial.

(we are the frameworks with which we ask and answer ourselves things)

What does a painter prioritize? Each case is an inflection of desiring painting. Each desire is a way of updating a history that collapses linear time: ancient emotions are evoked here, and in that evocation their transfiguration is inevitable. All time is anachronistic.

There is no original. There are life and its relationships. In speaking of this, in trying to create a defence of painting as presence, as a non-original technology that produces new codes, I can't not think that not all painting performs the same operation. There are also fascist paintings.

I know that the paintings you and I are interested in are those that manage to be critical of reality, whether from the figural or from any other strategy; paintings that, as Paul Klee said, can make us see. And to make see implies stopping taking things for granted in order to attend to life. May all genocides end once and for all. All our love to the Palestinian people. May they stop disappearing people everywhere, including Mexico, the country from which we write. May we be able to go out day and night without being raped and thrown in rivers. The painting we invoke, its spaces and relationships, seeks in its constitution the same thing: the production of Bagagwas or dignified forms of life in different multiplicities, in differences that intersect and contrast. There are no neutral positions in art. Producing and perceiving are already taking positions.

Eric, gathering around a painting like around a fire, is no small thing. I know we will continue invoking our Bagagwas.

meow meow,

S.