For his exhibition at the MARCO, Din Matamoro (Vigo, 1958) takes as a starting point a famous premise by Kandinsky: “White is a deep, absolute silence, full of possibility”. This exhibition brings together a selection of his latest works, focused on the study of colour. It also includes previous pieces which, in line with his whole oeuvre, involves an essay on perception, its mechanisms and emotions.

Din Matamoro paints canvases that seem monochrome in appearance and he does so slowly, carefully applying successive layers of material. Perhaps that's why we perceive them as dense but never static. Whoever stands before the works, observes them with curiosity, devotes time to them, eventually feels shapes and colours coming out, hidden behind the last layer, under the paints' skin. Paintings reveal what happens inside, the paint as living matter, slow mystery and an inner space of rumours. It is the eye that questions; the paint that seduces and dialogues.

Din Matamoro lives among images: some of them he draws with unusual voracity, some he finds in everyday objects, some he builds, some he writes, and some he paints. There is no downtime or lucky breaks, everything is a process, getting ready for the moment, with a watchful, sagacious, generous eye. His mind and his workshop are always on the boil, but there is a firm — upright — certainty to his chosen destiny, his attitude, his rigor, and his pulse. He confesses he is full of hesitations around paintings, about how they are perceived, but he is aware of the light inside them which ends up revealing itself.

The rightful place for Matamoro's paintings, which are naked only in appearance, is alongside a timeless and contemporary painting which was an epoch-defining and brought new ways of looking and understanding. Paintings of touch, of balance, but also of disclosure, of unveiling; paintings to walk around, to talk about. Alive painting.

Miguel Fernández-Cid and Pilar Souto Soto

This book is available for purchase at the Museum’s Bookshop (LASAL BOOKS) and also online www.lasalbooks.com