Selected Work (2017-2018)

GUIM TIÓ: THE GOING WAY
Returning from México and leave it all behind.
With Alex Katz’s delicacy, Gauguin’s colors and Hockney’s vitality, Guim Tió
embarks himself on a new no return path that runs forward, upwards and towards
the future.
If his last portraits were an exercise about memory, the new landscapes seem to think about the tomorrow that will soon be today. Previously he used to ask himself, where do we come from? Now, he wants to know, where are we going? That’s why the characters no longer remember or forget but, contemplate and imagine. His paintings are like a breath of fresh air. They force us to stop for a moment and leave aside the speed of our daily life. The most beautiful gift in a supersonic world, is the
luxury of the pause.
As in Friedrich’s paintings, the main characters are on their back in order to put ourselves facing an immeasurable nature that evokes each and everyone of the great life questions. Perfect balance between tension and calm, the introspective drive of the scenes its stained on Tió’s vibrant tone canvases: lemon yellow soils, golden peaks or salmon-like skies seduce us like the crimson flower that grows in the grass.
The poet Wallace Stevens used to say: “It’s not always easy to tell the difference between thinking and looking out the window”. Vermeer, Dalí or Hopper loved windows. Alfred Hitchcock and Helmut Newton did also love that element. An opening that often becomes a mirror so we can see ourselves. For Guim instead, the window is that lonely place from which to observe the humility of snow, water and smoke.
Guim Tió is the observant traveler, who suffers from the Stendhal syndrome not when entering the cathedral, but in front of a hillside. The horizon is no longer a straight line but a string of pyramids, the always sacred triangle. “I do not like plains where I can not sit still for long. And whatever may yet come to me as destiny and experience, will include some wandering and mountain climbing” Nietzsche wrote. The land is then the starting point of an ascending path that goes from abyssal depths to the summits and the sky. Climbing a mountain is much more than just reaching the top. It’s about gaining height to understand things. Getting distance to
see better.
A pristine lake, a field of rye, an icy mountain, an airplane that tears the sky. Returning from Mexico and start from scratch.
Gisela Chillida