Statement

It is difficult to take stock of experience when one is living in the moment. The present tense consistently shifts future moments into past events as it hurtles along the nebulous trajectory we call time. Rafael Gaete’s paintings give form to the inevitable march of life and the myriad connections therein by abstracting events and memories into pure color and embedding them within an abstracted topography. The juxtaposition of contrasting visual elements is of the utmost importance to Gaete, as he pairs diffuse black and white backgrounds with sharp stripes of color. The result vibrates within the audience’s field of vision and creates the feeling of optical movement. Though his canvases recall some of the illusionistic qualities of early Op Art, works like 45 Colors Violet to Orange are less about tricking the eye and instead point to a larger conversation on observation and experience.

Born in Santiago, Chile, Gaete has lived and worked in Santa Barbara, CA since 2003. Throughout his career, the artist has sought to describe emotional states and the experience of time through abstract painting. Taking the utmost care, his meticulous painting process includes masking, careful overpainting, and exacting precision using the highest quality components. He often has multiple canvases active at once which will sometimes share formal similarities but are never the same. Working on a monumental scale, these pieces regularly take three to six months to complete because of his attention to detail and conscious application of paint in dynamic arrangements. Creating poignant relationships between line, shape, and color, Gaete dispenses with illusionary space in favor of constantly shifting picture planes. Each stripe is unique within the composition as the artist never repeats the same shade twice in a single painting. Rather than create patterns or gradients with his selection of hues, Gaete uses them as markers of time spent, emotional exertion, and lived sensations.

“My art is about microemotion and microsensations.”

“My art is about microemotion and microsensations,” he offers. The undulating lines can be read as points on an abstracted timeline where each color represents a fleeting moment or an important event which all add up to a lifetime of experience. The underlying black form, its edges blurring into the surrounding white, represents the continuous march of time but also speaks to the possibility of transformation. In works like 54 Colors Light Blue to Pink, we see Gaete start with multiple black stripes, and in 60 Colors Red to Orange, the stripes become a psychedelic burst. In other examples, targets, shapes, or Xs appear that intersect the colored lines at various points and create representations of interlocking lives and occurrences. Gaete remarks, “It is not only a [representation] of the present but also a realization that the present has infinite possibilities.” Diverging, joining, and melding with their surroundings, the surfaces offer each viewer an original perspective. Drawing from the legacy of Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism, and inspired early on by the work of fellow Chilean artist Roberto Matta, Gaete uses compositional elements to explore a more vast emotional and experiential structure.

Every stripe of color is read differently by the viewer as their own lives begin to adhere to the framework the artist provides. He notes that he is less interested in portraying the prescribed moments that society has told us are important and instead wants to invoke the moments your mind has a hard time processing. Whether it be a smell, a color, a specific sound, or a feeling that strikes in the moment but is difficult to place, Gaete sees these passing instances as a way of building up a lasting potential energy throughout our human existence. Sudden events that have a lasting impression are put on equal ground with long-awaited realizations in his segmented visualizations. Each painting acts as the key to unlocking a deeper understanding of the way we live in this world.