THE VISUAL POETRY OF SILVIA FLICHMAN -LUIS FELIPE NOÉ

THE VISUAL POETRY OF SILVIA FLICHMAN I often say something I deeply believe: painting is essentially abstract because its building elements line, color, space - are connotative before denotative. Figurative is the world around us as well as ourselves. In this sense painting has the possibility, if the artist want, of being hyper-realistic, or based on these elements' coordination, a mixture of abstract and figurative elements, or even remaining in the abstraction’s domain. However, in the XX century with the affirmation of abstract painting, a fourth element, the collage, was added allowing the achievement of a new image based on previous ones. I recall all this to mention Silvia Flichman’s work in which the stage space -the white surface of canvas- is privileged with the purpose of making the line dance among colors which (musically, I would say) dance with it. The strange thing is that as a methodology the collage prevails in her work, but Silvia breaks into pieces the referential image (if this is the case) given that she is interested in the sensoriality of the materials she applies to build the work. The paintings of Silvia achieve in this way a very peculiar charm: the images she offers are witnesses, very well refined by sensibility, if not always enjoyed, of lived life. But her paintings, even through a certain melancholy, smile with irony. And her painting is very much an example of visual poetry because she uses all the mentioned elements in an essential way to refer abstractly to life, as one who says it is “love”. Luis Felipe Noe / 2008