“Attacking the space": are the three words with which Roberto Chartam defines the goal of his new project. However, at first glance, the expression doesn’t fit him at all. He is not an outlandish artist; he has never considered bringing life and work at the same degree of provocation as if he were to be a Dadaist. He seems calm and composed and the same quietness could be breathed in his works. In fact, the balance, harmony, were essential ingredients in his earlier exhibition, Point of No Return. There’s a necessity to free the word "attack" from its traditional and violent connotations in order to find a new meaning, the one that Roberto Chartam let slip but has not wanted to explain to me.
Attack the space. "But from where?" I ask. "Inside out," he gives a laconic reply. "But why?" I insist. "Because drawers have always been limited to the two-dimensional, because It seems we need to settle with paper, because air and alternative ways have always been part of the sculpture heritage.
And now, at last, on his third attempt, he has exploded, neither like an enraged child nor as a forgotten and resentful genius, but as someone whom the canons, the limits, the established, more than melancholy produce laziness. When then you analyze the Compositions of him (he has refused to give them any semantically charged title so that we, public eager for intentions and metaphors, can walk calmly around the room without having to look for an interpretation to interpretation. For him, "attack" is not to change the paradigm, nor having us get back to our places enraged but to explore how far you can go by means of drawing.
Because drawing has always been done with charcoal and paper, with a pencil and a wall. But can we draw with threads? And if instead of on the wall, I move the line one and a half centimeters forward, is that still a drawing? And even more: the shadows that these threads project with the help of light on the wall, are they still drawings? What Roberto Chartam wants, I guess, is that someone (if it can be a sculptor) comes to call the attention, is that anyone (if possible a neophyte in the matter) will approach and reproach him "This is not a drawing", because then he will have the door open to answer with another question: "If it's not a drawing, tell me what it is". And
he will not have replied to provoke, but to open a debate, because, although it seems incredible, Roberto Chartam, with all his experience, still does not know how to tell a drawing and sculpture apart, what is support and what is air.
The viewer, therefore, will walk (or so it is recommended) around the room to enjoy again the Studies that made up his previous exhibition, integrated into this new one as a first step; from there he will jump onto the intermediate Compositions; and from there to the last level: the Intervention, in which we will be able to walk between the real drawing and the provoked one. Or not. I mean; we will start with step number two to jump to three and from there to one. Or not. I mean: we will go the other way around in an attempt to try to trace the origins of the artist. Let the visitor choose.
But beware: woe to those who seek meaning beyond form and matter. The lives that Roberto Chartam left crossed long ago and that now uncross in this new stage are just that: lives, projects, that were left halfway through and now resumes. They neither attest to his restlessness nor do they reconcile him with a sentimental state. It would be a mistake to interpret the joy or euphoria from one of his works. This work will have to aspire to be Joy or Euphoria, or then it won't be. And that is achieved by drawing with threads, painting with words, cooking with colors.
Because the only thing artists want is, more than crossing the border, having someone let them cross it.
Fernando Sanchez Calvo
Literature professor