MODERN AND CLASSIC SOTO

With the addition of these two factors the variability of the work of Jesus Soto and, by the way, his constant aesthetic use, it occurs:

- the work of art to produce is the germ or the potential departure point, of a variety of image-works, contained in the first structure.

- the availability of the spectator to change its point of view, with which a multiplicity of stimuli will be able to recreate when catching snapshots, with the instantaneous aesthetic reward.

Whereas the works of other great kinetic artists like Agam, Tsai and Le Pare, would seem to wane, at least at the moment, in comparison with the optical enthusiasm provoked in the decade of the 70's, the artistic practices of Soto continue attracting, even if he has been taken up to 50 years of research and inventions of the kinetic art. Perhaps that also must not only to the selective technical skill of the Master, but "to the conceptual and playful models" - as Carlos Silva has written- capable to settle down an order in the chaos from what arrives to us through the senses, as we tried to emphasize in this exhibition. Before such perfects and already consolidated previous works, by thus saying, institutionalised, they emphasize with a rare vehemence in the artist, the Scriptures of a lively chromatics (cobalt, overseas, yellow, violet, cadmium, red), born of that complementariness whereupon the artist puts to work the sensitive-touching dimension of the spectator, equally than the rational elements of the line. So subtle and unusual Scriptures, are a new gift that offers to the spectators, in a substantive modification when the artist Dace decades ago raised us in their black and white Scriptures.

I have been able to follow very close that process, not only like a regular observer, but as promotional and publishing of the book that turns on the language of Soto, called "Soto and the Scripture", elaborated by Carlos Silva. In those texts and illustrations, are the keys to be deciphering how the writing is the same language of the universe, and how the artist makes it specific and individual in the infinite variety of its works.

There are great teachers whom, without stopping to be it, they do not invent, because they are dedicated to represent, with the greater possible justness, a tendency already verified indeed. But Soto experiments and innovates, as per Reveron did it at his moment, in the search of new generations of spectators who can accede to the pleasure to observe his work, capable to extend and to intensify the experience of the daily life. When in these last years, the art of many young people is led by the transitory thing, the fleeting thing, betting right away, the Sotian work does not want to leave that the temporarity takes away the eternity, or at least, to the prolonging future of the aesthetic thing. The title selected for this exhibition, "Classic and Modern Soto", responds to the previous analysis. If the classic thing is what it has become invulnerable reflecting time, and it has been inserted forever in the history of a culture, then it is correct to say that Jesus Soto enjoys the prerogatives of the classic thing. In the same way, as its work rises in the last innovating strip whereupon closing the modernity, Soto is doubtlessly modern, not by the time that he has been called to live, but by the characteristics of its language, assuming that the modern thing meant a variety of deep changes before the attitudes of the artist and the spectator of the past.

In this way, Soto, like other great authors, conjugates both aspects, classic and modern. As the appreciation of a work that depends to the point of view on the spectator, the adjectives "classic" and "modern" are alternative and unconsciously used by the public, according to where they locate the work of art in the history of the XX century: if they observe the definitive and legimitator qualities of a language, then they will be judging it like classic; if rather, they are pleased to notice thousands of shades of never identical images, then Soto will be seen like a modern one. On one way or another, or accepting both terms, the certain thing is that in this sample the people are delighted with good art. The theory and the practice of an artist recalls once and again what he has advanced, in many years of activity, from the second half of the XX century, as far as procedures to create and to show their works: the installation, the ambiences, the programmed art, the serialization, the multi sensorial, the interaction with the public and the use of the computer for the research, among other variants. And as far as the art of the performance, we can say continuously that this, in certain way, is been executed by the public in the rooms, moving from one side to another, returning back, inclining laterally the head, to recapture the alternatives that the work of Jesus Soto offers.

It is convenient to remember how our artist's actuality has always arranged, from his beginnings to this splendid exhibition, the rationality where upon is conceived the work of art, and the multiplicity of procedures that makes it patent, particular and specific, and mainly, accessible to the appropriation of the public. Today, Soto attracts us with resorting, with his comes and goes from the present to a past that is reanimated instantaneously with the glance of the spectator, being obtained a total perspective field where the Scriptures of alive colours appeared like promises of a future that perhaps - I adventure myself to say it- announce more sculptural works and fulfilled of strong chromatics. Classic and modern, Soto demonstrates us with each exhibition, he takes risks and exposes himself, that is to say, he is placed outside himself, in that necessary depersonalisation so that the spectator becomes rich in the supreme game to interchange images as in a dream.

Ninoska Huerta

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