THE LAST
METAMORPHOSIS OF FERNANDO UREÑA RIB
Fernando
Ureña Rib has been, in the past Two years, a very different painter
from the youth of the seventies. Despite the fact the returns to his
sporadically previous style as a necessary exercise of his vocation.
Proving (to himself as well as to others) that he remains capable of
the accuracy characteristic of portraiture and realism. We believe in
the silent, cautious, even guarded evolutionary process that leads to
a strong and mature expression. It is extremely rare to find a sudden
leap from one style to its contrast with successful plastic results.
We observe the transition of Fernando Ureña Rib
from a testimonial figurative Art to a surrealistic neo-abstraction
Art. The first method is both prudent and ambitious (never a brusque
rupture.) It is a measured experimental boldness absorbed in the next
phase. Thus, around 1986, the artist began to reinvent the World of
elements, forms and colors fully revealed towards the end of the
following year. His exhibition entitled Intima produced a singular
impact. Throughout this period of gestation Fernando Ureña Rib
appeared to remain faithful to the vibrant, figurative, oniric quality
of his human subject and to the expression of growth, expansion and
fertility in his vegetal themes.
Here we sense the throb of the "Tropic" (Title of
another one of his shows) and it climatic effects on both man and
nature.
The poetic texts that introduce his catalogues-
poetry is the "Violin de Ingres" of the artist-, among the emotive
phrases of anecdotes we find the hidden key to diverse combinations,
organized and harmonious, always more committed to imaginary
transmutations. In Trópico (April 1996) Ureña Rib says: "One begins to
see the mirage, those reverberations of heat which now melt the images
and convert them into a volatile, evanescent chromatic shap
And later (Celajes, November 1996) "The river
multiplied and divided the last colors of the afternoon and was
converted into an enormous kaleidoscope of liquid and phosphorescent
metals." While George Arzeno Brugal justly observed, more directly: "
Simultaneously, many of his paintings take up once more the ancient
theme of reflecting movement and the displacements of bodies in
space."
Marianne de Tolentino.
Santo
Domingo, 1992
