Like a Silent Poet

Sidi el Karchi

from February 12, 2014 to March 29, 2014

Curator: Manuel G. Freijo

Regarding the discussion that has been held since ancient Greece, painting vs. poetry, the one in which Plutarch immortalizes the quote from Simonides, "Painting is mute poetry, and poetry is a talking painting." In it, two artistic expressions that come from the same place, from pathos, from the place of emotions and feelings, as the Greeks would say, have been equated. Lustrums ago Horace exclaimed "Like painting, so is poetry". And throughout the history of mankind we can find this discussion, again and again, from Da Vinci to contemporary artists like the one that concerns us. The work of Sidi el Karchi, is carried out in classical media, such as canvas or paper; in it we can feel the tranquillity of Hockney's work and at the same time the cruelty of Bacon; it is clear a search for a silence .... a particular silence, based on isolating the human figure, to focus his gaze on the human condition, on the pathos.

Simonides: Poema pictura loquens, pictura poema silens

Horace: Ut pictura poesis.

Isn't it a shame that in comedy,

as if in mercy,

we ask that without discord

they listen to us for half an hour?

That's why I want to paint it, [sic]

because the one who murmurs

the links in the painting

to paint it as if it were silent.

Mateo Rosas de Oquendo