Permanent exhibition by Héctor Villarroel

Crossing is the expression of a desire that the painting become a depository for wishes and hopes, and that the painting itself could take in and hold that which is out of reach. With each crossing from place to place, one is made aware of the transitory, and that is what is recorded in the painting. Through travel, one is encircled by so much information that the dialogue between exterior and interior, between place and displacement becomes deafening. In the end my subconscious is pierced, and the act of painting is the window through which I re-invent the metaphor.

Surrounded by an indifference and incompleteness that is so common these days, I strive to bring together something more, to bring life into each act. In the solitude of the studio, I explore mindscapes, the perfect decor for exploration where silence speaks with so many inaudible and abstract voices.

For each place I move, I try to decipher some “why” with an almost obsessive desire to recover that which has escaped through the many holes in memory. Painting, once again, is a persistent symbol of motion that speaks to me of travelogues and the need to record experience. The incessant crossing of bridges and more bridges, real and invisible, are like abhorrent waiting rooms that only offer signs of absence and make the need for refuge even more urgent. To paint is to re-create this refuge inside yourself where you are necessarily human and need nothing, save intuition.

Beginning in one place, Crossing gestates and moves on like a trail, leaving footprints scattered along the road. It is a circular voyage of permanent escapes reconstructed only by the fragile memory of gestures and passage, of our nomadic journey through this world.

Héctor Villarroel interview by Vidas e historias in 2012 exhibitions