Buenos Aires - Braga Menendez Arte Contemporaneo recently showed Juan Videla’s new paintings (22"X28") of empty public spaces. Almost still-lives of nothingness, the paintings are so empty of people that their absence becomes a felt presence. Trains, restaurant kitchens, building hallways – spaces usually occupied – are depicted without figures, seemingly late at night, after a shift or rush hour. The rooms’ overhead fluorescents highlight their emptiness, and we can almost feel the energy that, now gone, once filled the room. Each image could easily be a still from a Kubrick film, whose rooms often resonate with the psychic imprint of previous, intense incidents.
Clearly Videla can paint. He achieves a perfect tension between painterliness and an almost-photographic realism. And his work’s relation to photography seems to highlight painting’s dominance in Buenos Aires: Videla might flirt with photography’s language, but they remain paintings. I think all really good paintings have an impact like a punch in the stomach. But instead of punching, Videla’s painting withholds – both its punch and figures – and thereby these absences only heighten their presences, creating a very engaging tension.
Nathan Tichenor
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