Sergio Lopez Orozco: Paper as a means of expression

Jean Couteau, Denpasar/Bali

When viewing an artwork, one usually focuses on the colors, the organization of lines, the skill shown in the depiction of the characters etc., in short all the elements that "occupy" -- or are imposed on -- the canvas or paper that constitutes the ground of the work.

Yet, in the works exhibited at the ARMA museum in Bali by noted Mexican artist Sergio Lopez Orozco, from June 9th to July 9th, what one first sees -- what indeed is striking -- is something else: the "ground" on which the artist has worked has become a field of expression in itself.

Thus, the 59-year-old Orozco does not merely paint on paper but creates textured paper, which he uses as a ground for his work. This he does by digging into the cultural and technical wealth of his Mexican culture: the paper he is working on -- the paper he is actually creating -- is that inherited from the millenary tradition of the Mexican Indians. Called amate paper, it is one of a handful of original types of paper created during the history of humankind, beside the Egyptian papyrus, Chinese paper and the Pacific taga paper --- also known in Indonesia.

The exploration of this amate paper technique by Orozco is original enough to warrant attention. It shows what has been one of the constant characteristics of Mexican art since the days of the great muralists of the early 20th century, like Rivera and Orozco -- not related to Sergio -- that is the ability of artists to create an original "art modernity" by digging into their pre- Colombian and Mestizo traditions.

Sergio was still a young student of 24 when he first came across amate paper. The fabrication of this ficus-based paper was then the exclusive domain of a small group of Otomi Indians living on the Mexican mesa highlands 200 km from Mexico. In pre- Colombian days, he said, there had been up to three hundred locations throughout the whole North-American sub-continent where this paper was fabricated. Yet following Cortez' conquest and the subsequent Hispanization of the country, it had almost disappeared, its secrets of fabrication kept by only a few.

It is through one of these few, Carmello, that Sergio came to know the fabrication of this paper. Carmello was a peddler who sold amate paper to students at the National Academy of the Arts where Sergio was studying. Sergio was intrigued. Feeling "passion" and openness, Carmello invited Sergio to visit him and his family in his village, where several dozen people, he said, were still making amate paper in the manner of the ancients. This was more than Sergio had dreamed of.

Some time afterward, carrying only a small bag and a pair of boots, Sergio arrived in Pablito, Carmello's village. He was shoeless, as he had taken off his boots to cross the river leading to the village. This, he was later told, announced him as a "pure" and well-intentioned man to the villagers. They were a people who had suffered much, a small, non-Spanish speaking group of Indians who still carried the scars of the long domination of their country by the Spanish masters.

Sergio, a man from the city, Spanish-speaking and European- looking, should have been perceived as an outsider. Only he was not. He was humble, and in the position of the one who wanted to know. Carmello's mother welcomed him like a son, and soon had him initiated into the local tribe, through a complex rite of awakening of the deities of the earth. This initiation over, Sergio was allowed to learn the secrets of amate fabrication: the gathering of the ficus petuliaris it is made from, its mashing into a paste and finally its drying until it became amate paper. He stayed in Pablito for more than two years and still now regularly visit his Indian friends, Carmello and the others: they have become family.

Sergio Lopez Orozco, however, did not only learn the technique of amate making. He developed it. The amate sold by the Otomi -- sometimes even to New York or Paris -- is regular flat paper. Sergio understood that all sorts of visual possibilities were open through the exploration of its texture: roots could be integrated into it; effects of waves achieved; most importantly, this did not appear as mere collages, but as if issuing from the material itself.

The working of amate, therefore, and later of all sorts of other papers, became Orozco's chief means of expression. Whereas other artists focus on lines, colors, and the rendering of form, he focuses on thickness, density, and the visual quality of fibers. If he paints on amate, as he indeed does, it is to complement the inherent visual qualities he has already achieved on paper: he paints using natural colors, and representing elementary symbols. All, therefore, combine to give his works a natural, earthly, yet at the same time, highly sophisticated character that is undoubtedly novel as well as highly attractive.

Orozco is not indeed just another Mexican painter. He has exhibited in numerous Mexican as well as American museums -- including the MOMA. His visit to Indonesia was motivated not only by curiosity as a tourist, but by his study of the world's indigenous papers. In Bali, for example, he dreams of rediscovering the technique used in the making of the now disappearing ulantaga paper.

There is indeed a lesson to be drawn from Orozco for Indonesian painters. Indonesian painting was initially born out of the borrowing of "techniques" from the West. When, following Soedjojono, local artists became aware of this overwhelming Western influence, they reacted by "indonesianizing" their themes and symbols. But they never "indonesianized" their techniques. What Orozco did with regard to Mexico, local artists can and should do with regards to Indonesia: there are probably still many dead or dying techniques that await rediscovery; to be turned into an original means -- and end -- of creative expression.