Fabián Tanferna: "Small monuments"
A metaphysics of space
The monument is both an evocation and a tribute, it somehow implies a summons of feelings in a state of perfection and purity.
Releasing and driving this momentum to capture it in an image, implies implementing the qualities and attributes of both the technical and the artistic.
Fabián Tanferna`s small monuments have the fine ability to give the space a metaphysical dimension and , paradoxically , intimate rather than monumental. Without losing extent or character they are images that evoke the touch, the murmurs, the memorious patina, the hollows of silence and rhythmic ease and “sound “ of gestural strokes. The sphere or circle (round but both are substantially different), the absolute verticals or significant imperfections, slipped as casual touches or dropouts, as involuntary shaking or discreet accent difference, represent a clear emotional, personal, nontransferable function.
“Polytheistic Chapel ", " Refuge with ladder " are spatial arabesques; on that line but contained "Porch " is a flap on the surface, while "The ark of the future" is pure constructive virtuality, "Sleeping Fortress" an oscillation between color and mono chromatic; " Cenotaph ", " Building Pendulum " and " Side porch " provide the purity and rigor of the Apollonian, but opening a reassessment of color, whose strength lies in the sensitivity it contributes and her tiny and concentrated limits.
The " Small Monuments" owe Architecture, its roots, the general aura, but it is those inquiries that Tanferna approaches with careful discretion in his materials, elements that give character to the image, oscillating from a three-dimensional body (which indeed it is) and therefore without denying its architectural pedigree or virtual pictorial drawings, to a painter's craft that explores with devotion and talent the promising field of painting.
The way in which the artist introduces us to the perfect intelligence of a line and the deep emotions of color, is curious; I say curious because nothing is closed nor presents itself as final. So much so, that many times the line is also color and vice versa. Maybe "Side porch " and " Polytheistic Chapel " are good examples of what I mention.
Let our gaze wander about the sequence of the " Small Monuments " Fabian Tanferna presents in a soliloquy that has a dash of secular prayer. We see a serene and graceful ondulating flow, even in works that were not done on photographic paper but on handmade paper. Everything adapts in the tour of the various works to the lingering of a captivated gaze: the point is there is depth with no precipices, formal varieties with no baroque, amplitude with no concessive dimensions, color determined with precision without overwhelming, everything singing quietly about the metaphysics of space, that is ultimately, an existential metaphysics.
San Fernando, Argentina
April 14th of 2014
Horacio Safons
