New itineraries in Ricardo Laham's track for Raúl Santana
September, 1999

In his last exhibition at Tema Gallery in 1991, besides a change in image compared with his previous abstractions, the start of a visual proposal could already be appreciated in Ricardo Laham's work following a particular track during these last years, until reaching its current new shapes.

It was the start of an itinerary of apparent changes, which revealed the first images of the artist's encounter with the unknown side of America, full of symbols and signs still vivid for us, coexisting with the technological and scientific world developing in the cities, far from the woods and the mountains. This is the old antinomy typical of many American territories where Indians and white races coexist, together with pre-Columbian archeology, posing a real esthetic universe even for modern art, which has looked at its diversity, as is the case of many great creators.

Ricardo Laham´s current position resembles that of many artists of the River Plate area such as Torres García who, after consolidating in constructivism, have turned their eyes to that world full of emblems still blinking at them from some populations across the continent.

In the first pieces started in 1989, always within planimetry, Laham reinvents the use of signs evoking America, which appears as a formal testimony, with its dynamic and original forms and with the presence of colors which present marked contrasts, far from the preminence of black and white, which dominated most of the artist's previous period. Here, it is important to point out that in works previous to 1970 the artist had done some studies in archetypal forms in small pieces which undoubtedly related him with constructive universalism. It is obvious that the artist now takes those intuitions back but with the formal knowledge acquired during his magnificent period in geometric abstraction. And what can also not be left out in this new stage is the growing presence of expression, opposed to the formality which marked his previous work. This is not only a formal change, but a change regarding his feeling for the world.

Then followed those aligned forms which keep a dialogue with archetypal forms and are repeated as modules: dumb presences which generally constitute animal and human hibridations, which argument is simpler than the matter and of sparkling eloquence.

In the magnificent drawing "Untitled" (200 x 135 cm, oil on canvas, 1994), which summarizes another moment, a significant change in shapes takes place, now more freely aligned and appealing to colors; they are the representation of small sculptures and the artist presents a unique play between planimetries and insinuating naturalist spaces, as when the lines on the floor are drawn in some of the forms, showing a repeated erotic presence.

Persistently ranging form visions to procedures, the artist then turns those already expressive forms and now motives acquire dynamism and the eloquence of previous works.

Intuition and meditated construction together, and the presence of insinuated naturalist spaces, take us to his last works, now deliberately figurative and to some extent, expressionist.

America is still the background but now not only as a symbolic pre-Columbian presence. These pieces mix the past and the present in an original joint which turns reality into a symbolic space, as real modules. A dog or an anthropomorphic figure appear in a painting (both taken form Colima culture, Mexico) which appear as dumb witness by the barefoot which are a fragmentary Indian reference taken from an interview to the province of Formosa. Each piece shows as a dream zone creating a time where present and past are strange and silent presences, as if in an incomprehensible ritual. Will these be visual figures of this continent, referring to the immense marginality?

Far from formality and hermetism, in these last works the artist seems to present us a testimony of our current life, full of misery and horfanity.