The invisible is not the contrary of the visible: the visible has the framework of the invisible, and the invisible is the secret counterpart of the visible, for it only appears in it. It is the Vichturprasentierbar that has appeared in the world - one cannot look for it and every effort to see it makes it disappear, but it is on the line of the visible, that is its virtual home (between the lines).
The Visible and the Invisible, Maurice Merleau Ponty
In the beginning, the line. An undifferentiated form of potentiality. “Length without width” for Euclidean geometry, in this case the line does not represent, it reveals; it is not contour, it is apparition. It marks the transit between chaos and cosmos, between the formless and the form. For Óscar Valero and Mercedes Lara the line is a generative act, the link between the interior and the exterior: its gesture becomes form in the world.
Merleau-Ponty, in his reflection on perception, proposes that the visible and the invisible are “intertwined” as dimensions of the same experience. The line would then be the threshold where this porous border of the invisible becomes a figure. A wavy and thin, wavering, rigid, warm or sensual line is not the same thing. Its presence can give rise to plural and multiple meanings. Through it, different perspectives of reality can be expressed according to its nature and temperament, from the creation of figures to other symbols and sensations, depending on the stroke, the meaning will vary.
With the line, music, appreciable only by the auditory sense, is introduced into the visual and physical plane, allowing it to reveal the space it occupies and is the trace that gives possibility to the visual research of Oscar Valero, who seeks to graphically analyze the structure of the compositions of J. S. Bach. His line, straight, firm, with direction, refers us to the One of Neoplatonism, to the idea that reality arises from the simplest: the indivisible that connects with the metaphysical idea in an ideal line that reveals the maximum abstraction of music through visual perception. Bach's Prelude VIII in E Minor, from which the artist draws to create these works, is composed of only 8 notes, but reflects a deep complexity that returns to the musical structure itself, to the origin of harmony and to the beauty of each piece. With his stroke, criteria such as proportion, rhythm and melody are transformed into physical space, and the parameters of sound and music, such as pitch or measures, are codified and introduced into a grid to visually reveal the musical piece.
In Mercedes Lara, on the other hand, the line is a total sensitive experience, a “between” where the eye touches the world and the world allows itself to be touched. The line is the border and the union of her cartographies. It is an exploration of limits, of the idea that every change has an edge, and therefore, the line is not only division, but also connection or transition. The porcelain faces are marked by lines that resemble the lines of our hands, or the surface of a turbulent sea. Her textiles are at the same time weavings of light, which are formed not only by the linearity of the thread and the patterns created, but also by the transmission lines, the name given to the shadows generated by a line. In her works, the form itself becomes almost invisible, while she makes visible the horizon that divides water from sky, the limit that separates day from night or the light in a game of shadows and tensions that speak about fragility, limits and ties. The line not only demarcates, but opens, manifests.
The line is code, harmony, abstraction; it is form, and also idea. It is body, skin or border; it is materic, and also symbol. The contrast between the visible and the invisible means “that in order to fully understand the visible relations one must go to the relation of the implicit with the explicit...”. At the end, the line closes; it was actually a circle.
