Fernando Castro Borrego

Professor in Art History at the University of La Laguna, Spain

An experiment is present in the artwork of Denis Siniauski. In this sense, there is a clear difference from postmodern aesthetics. His works call for one of the most representative languages in the history of avant-garde art: abstraction in its different versions, from informalism to geometry.

To my mind, universality is the distinguishing mark of this artwork. And that doesn't surprise us. Two of the greatest Russian artists of the twentieth century, Lissitsky and Kandisnky, committed themselves to a universal interpretation of art. Both of them were professors of the German Bauhaus, the great school that spread the principles of abstract art and architectural rationality. We can talk about a spiritual alternative in Kandinsky that is present in some works of this exhibition. I refer to the double direction of Russian art of the late nineteenth century: universal through the reception of the French culture, and mystical, because of the survival that manifests itself in the aesthetics of the icons, replicated the spirituality of the Holy Russia, which was explicitly reflected in the artwork. French informalism and spirituality are evident in Denis Siniauski.

Román Hernández González

Doctor of Fine Arts,

Professor Department of Fine Arts

University of La Laguna, Spain

Percepción háptica y visual en la pintura de Denis Siniauski

Todo percibir es también pensar, todo razonamiento es también intuición, toda observación es también invención.
R. Arnheim

La obra de arte es, por definición, un gesto inefable. No obstante, –y desde la perspectiva de otro artista plástico o, para ser mas exacto, desde la visión de un escultor–, me propongo insinuar algunas claves del proceso de creación pictórica del artista bielorruso Denis Siniauski.

Materia, color, percepción táctilo-visual y silencio son conceptos que me sugiere la contemplación de sus obras tanto en la observación y el análisis como en su proceso de trabajo. Por definición, la percepción consiste en recibir, a través de los sentidos, las imágenes, los sonidos y las impresiones o sensaciones externas; una función psíquica que permite nuestro organismo captar, elaborar e interpretar la información que llega desde el entorno más inmediato. Me atrevo incluso a sugerir que Siniauski está influenciado por la teoría hegeliana de que todo proceso se basa en la razón pues ésta es la base del conocimiento. Sus obras no son producto del azar, todo está controlado: la aplicación de la materia sobre los distintos soportes, los colores, el formato, la luz…

He presenciado en varios de sus espacios de trabajo (Düsseldorf, Minsk, Moscú y en mi propio taller en Tenerife) la forma de proceder de este artista a la hora de enfrentarse a sus lienzos y tablas, es decir, al campo [de acción]; el espacio que presenta unas características constantes y homogéneas. Ese campo con el que interactúa el artista no es otro que el espacio para crear un nuevo espacio-campo que es modificado por la composición. En ese campo se realizan operaciones, pero a su vez las operaciones obran sobre su campo (Atilio Marcolli). De esta interacción nace la tensión, el movimiento, el equilibrio en un espacio geométrico comparable a un folio en blanco con el que se enfrenta el escritor en su creación.

Pues bien, Siniauski, se enfrenta al soporte campo-espacio con un tema primordial: el mar. Sin apenas usar los pinceles, pinta con sutileza; arrastra la pintura con mayor o menor intensidad hasta conseguir el efecto deseado, toca la pintura, la siente en sus manos como la materia plástica que es. Traslada a sus lienzos o tablas una gran cantidad de material, de colores que vierte directamente de los tubos de pintura con movimientos diversos y una regla metálica que arrastra sobre la pintura siempre bajo un estricto control.

Obtiene diversos matices de colores que podemos ver en los océanos y mares en sus profundidades que son trasladados a la superficie del lienzo o la tabla. A pesar de haber nacido en Minsk, donde el mar está ausente, lo ha interiorizado como elemento importante de su trayectoria vital, hasta tal punto en que se convierte en patrón de barcos de vela con los que ha cruzado el océano atlántico y los mares mediterráneo y negro. Al surcar sus aguas se nutre de los colores diversos y de la incidencia de la luz en cada uno de ellos en diferentes épocas del año.

En los espacios naturales que pisa se detiene pensativo, contempla el ir y venir de las aguas y sus efectos sobre la arena, su percepción es fundamental para llevar al lienzo sus ideas. Las arenas volcánicas que acoge en su taller forman parte de su ideario estético y pictórico, un misterio aún por descubrir, pues como bien señaló J. L. Borges, nuestro artista sigue sus arduos laberintos a la hora de tomar en sus manos la pintura y el material con los que se mueve en el espacio euclídeo pero también onírico. Siniauski sueña el mar y la tierra, los percibe con todos sus sentidos. Goza la vida y su efímera luz se traduce en sus telas, mares inmensos sin final, horizontes lejanos e invisibles, su mente es capaz de configurar la experiencia de la realidad percibida por sus ojos y sus manos. En este proceso racional hay que destacar la importancia del sentido del tacto para nuestra experiencia y nuestra comprensión del mundo. Como bien señala J. Pallasmaa: todos los sentidos, incluidos la vista, son prolongaciones del sentido del tacto; los sentidos son especializaciones del tejido cutáneo y todas las experiencias sensoriales son modos del tocar y, por tanto, están relacionadas con el tacto. La primacía del mundo háptico ha sido señalada por el antropólogo A. Montagu: “[La piel] es el más antiguo y sensible de nuestros órganos, nuestro primer medio de comunicación y nuestro protector más eficaz [...] El tacto es el padre de nuestros ojos, orejas, narices y bocas. Es el sentido que pasó a diferenciarse en los demás, un hecho que parece reconocerse en la antiquísima valoración del tacto como la madre de todos los sentidos”.

Este artista parte de las singularidades de su territorio pero también de todos aquellos por los que transita. Como no podría ser de otra manera, se acerca al paisaje ––como artista que es y no concibo el concepto de artista aplicado a alguien que no sea un atento observador––, como un lector que es capaz de leer cuanto acontece a su alrededor. Denis ha vivido y amado el paisaje desde su más temprana infancia, ha disfrutado intensamente del entorno que le vio nacer, la ciudad bielorrusa de Minsk y sus inmensos bosques, lagos y ríos en los que los colores llegan a su máxima intensidad con las diferentes estaciones. Por tanto, el acercamiento al paisaje se define a través de la percepción atenta del entorno, en todos sus detalles y cuando digo entorno me refiero no sólo al paisaje, sino también a la arquitectura, a la flora y a la fauna. Su visión del paisaje infinito es el vacío, porciones de paisajes de infinitos horizontes que trasladados al soporte pictórico campo-espacio adquieren todo una dimensión de equilibrio y serenidad.

Con pinturas acrílicas, emulsiones, arenas y tierras naturales que recoge por los lugares que transita en sus continuos viajes (África, Canarias, Azores, Europa, Rusia, Bielorusia…) da cuerpo a sus obras. Las arenas son muestras del paso silencioso del tiempo sobre el basalto, los granitos y las areniscas, el resultado de la erosión continua de la rocas esculpidas por el viento y el mar. Siniauski conoce el viento, el mar, la tierra, es un hombre áureo que hila no sólo pintura y color, también materia. Como bien escribió el franciscano Giovanni Fidanza (San Buenaventura) allá por el siglo XIII, lo importante en una obra de arte no es la representación objetiva de la realidad sino de la idea que abriga el artista en su interior. En consecuencia, más que representación la función del arte y, en este caso de la pintura, es la expresión. Tal es el caso que nos ocupa, nuestro artista es un atento observador de todo aquello que le rodea, estudia la naturaleza, es su materia prima en la que sus sentidos háptico y visual adquieren plena categoría.

En sus paisajes la paz, el silencio, el color, la materia... adquieren una belleza destinada a purificar nuestros corazones. ¿Qué otra cosa podría expresar el pintor o el poeta más que su encuentro con el mundo? (M. Merleau Ponty).

También debo destacar otro aspecto esencial para los sentidos que, sin lugar a dudas, o ––por lo menos a mí me lo parece–– es el silencio. Ese silencio revaloriza los sentidos, se trata de un silencio subjetivo que se desprende de la visión de espacios vacíos y horizontes lejanos. La inexistencia de sonido alguno no implica que no haya comunicación entre el espectador y la obra. Ese silencio subjetivo que emana de las pinturas nos propone una observación pausada en soledad que sirve para una meditación reflexiva.

Como individuo, esto es, como unidad independiente, Siniauski es único y, por tanto, su expresión creativa también. Desde su propia existencia y experiencia en cada lugar, desde la libertad de expresión y desde su propio pensamiento creativo traduce en sus paisajes una sutil experiencia vital de goce y tranquilidad. Él mismo es una persona afable, observadora, reflexiva, comprometida con su trabajo, un referente de inusitada perseverancia en nuestro tiempo. La pintura se convierte en su caso, en un formidable acto de fe.

Como señalé al principio, no soy crítico de arte y no niego la legitimidad de la misma; Tan sólo me he atrevido a indagar y esbozar unas pocas y diversas impresiones siempre parciales, de la obra de Denis Siniauski. Queda el espectador-lector obligado a indagar y aportar las suyas.

BIBLIOGRAFÍA

ARNHEIM, Rudolf: Art and Visual Perception. A Psychology of the Creative Eye, California, 1954. Versión castellana de M. L. Balseiro, Arte y percepción visual. Psicología del ojo creador, Alianza Forma, Madrid, 1985 (6ª ed.).
MARCOLII, Attilio: Teoría de campo, Alberto Corazón, 1978.
PALLASMAA, Juhani: The eyes of the skin. Architecture and the senses, Chichester (West Sussex, 2015. Versión Castellana de M. Puente Los ojos de la piel. La arquitectura y los sentidos, G. Gili, Barcelona, 2010 (1ª ed. , 4ª tirada).
TATARKIEWICZ, Wladyslaw: Historia Estetyki, Warszawa, 1962, trad. del polaco D. Kurzyka, Historia de la estética. La estética medieval, Akal, Madrid, 1990.

Noemi Feo Rodriguez

Doctor in Art History

Born in Minsk (Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic) in 1975. His initial training was centered on the interest in art, architecture and design, studies that he began in 1985. In 1992 he entered the Belarusian Art Academy and since 1999 he studied at the 3D Art School of Microsoft. With the entry of the new century, he works in the area of design, architecture and the realization of large murals and reliefs in Belarus, Poland and Italy. In 2005 he began his ecological study on the structure of the habitat of the human being and the structure of water, as the main basis of life. His interest in art is linked to his interest in the sea, obtaining the diving certificate, the sailing captain's license in Belarus as well as his studies at the RYA school in Great Britain. Since 2010, he has been doing study trips through the Black Sea, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean. After his arrival to Spain he experimented with new techniques such as the use of sea water, natural soils and volcanic sand. Since 2015 he has been developing his artistic work in Tenerife and Minsk.

Between the East and the West a journey of centuries. An adaptation to the environment, to change, to the unexpected. Long roads, steep paths and the search for new territories. Just like the roots, Russian and Belarusian contemporary art expands beyond its frontiers. Europe immersed in globalization, technology and pseudo liberty of borders, becomes a residence and headquarters of creative confluence. Artists who work independently but linked to their origins and the mutations of funambulist and globalized world. The Belarusian Denis Siniauski demonstrate the individuality of the traditional and contemporary perception of the artistic fact. Their works reflect historical episodes, rebellions, struggles, entrances and exits, losses and searches, political, moral and ideological conflicts, and, of course, an inevitable and inextricable contemporaneity.

Denis Siniauski (Minsk, 1975) is situated within the framework of pure and fluid composition, which reflects a minimalist perception of art and a landscape look on the West. Siniauski takes up abstraction and informalism, in a pictorial and material reading. The influence of the territorial, the use of brushstrokes and natural resources, draw his geographical discourse on the island, the sea and the volcanic matter.

In the Way to the East exists, therefore, a territorial connection, a cultural vehicle between artists born during the era of the Soviet Union and linked to the cultural practice of the country. This project highlights the presence of a contemporary art that seeks survival, beyond the parameters established by the headquarters of a globalized art industry. The works that also shares academic origins, but not a creative line in common, except the language of abstraction, forming part of the still palpable and evident consequences of the Cold War. The borders, the limits, the continuous and unexpected changes of an administration under pressure, configure a panorama, still, unbalanced and fractured. Tenerife, home of this European creative action, has become the focus of activity of its artistic production.

Olga Rybchinskaya

Art critic, Curator, Researcher,
Сurator of National Pavilion of the Republic of Belarus
at 56th and 58th International Art Exhibition -
La Biennale di Venezia

The forms and images in his paintings transform, turn into color splashes, planes, become the echo of recognizable subjects. They are modified but retain the memory of what they represent — events. This recognition happens at the level of perception. “The artist seems to break with “standing on the ground” and dematerializes as an observer...” , fixating on the context of the stop. Denis Siniauski engages in a complex inner monologue, where a painting becomes a label of self-interpretation, an attempt of the translational exploration of reality. His peculiar manner is that which lives through him — his intrinsic attitude towards the world.

The world absorbed by the solid media space, in which everything is information and endless exchange, is, in a sense, a fact of modernity. The artist exists in this flow seeking to slow it down. He proposes a perception mode which is represented via constituting a subject or image in a special way. He elaborates such a way of seeing and understanding the world that brings imagination to the forefront. There’s is no longer a need to wait for the "now of recognizability" (Walter Benjamin) or saturate/fill up one’s sight. In other words, we do not perform the act of contemplating a picture, we directly perceive it. And the natural matter becomes the essential integral component in the formation of an artwork, its magical aspect. Symbolically, the painting reverts to its natural origin: the essential axis of a painting recreates it as a subject of the surrounding world. Thus, art is conceived not only through the experience of human life but also in relation to other forms of organic beings.

We are examining the gaze directed at us while standing under this gaze. We see images of the ocean as if its whole essence were looking at us. The artist captures the very substance of sight, involving the viewer, making them part of the work — combining the human and the natural. The observer turns into a poet, crossing over into the space of “absolute fantasy,” finds themselves to be balancing on the border of the painterly. This language extends its influence beyond the moment of direct communication/dialogue, urges the viewer to get back to learning to see the world, think about it.

“Contemplation of the world was replaced by the penetration into it,” the man achieved “the perfection of the abstraction of modern thinking” — Franz Marc wrote in his aphorisms. World, laws, phenomena and their essence have become unimaginable. On the other hand, there is the desire of art to make "visible that which has been perceived secretly" and the dialogue with nature that is still "an indispensable condition of creativity" (Paul Klee). Artist Denis Siniauski explores the "forming forces": the world of symbols, objects of the well-known outer world, which indirectly indicate the depth of the unknown. These are the stories of real life and the mysterious unknown it contains. Embarking on his quest, the artist makes the pictorial canvas the ultimate goal and evidence of this journey, with its pauses and halts.

Today, a pause is only possible in the field of art. The artist alone is capable of moving the fragments of the past into the present, and objects of the present into the future. There is still a place for slowing down and silent unrest — simultaneously a Platonic cave and the cave of revelation, where the illusory truth can still be found. This invaluable experience of silence, in which there is only an “inhale” and “exhale” — “a breath for the sake of nothing”.

Celestino Celso Hernández

Curator, Director of Museum of Contemporary Art Eduardo Westerdahl (MACEW), Spain

The perception of the multiple nuances offered by the incidence of light on the landscape, be it of natural or urban origin, on people, on objects, is a matter of special attention for artists, who show interest, precisely because of these characteristics, in the results of their works. This artist already saw it, he understood it and he left it painted just like that, applying post-impressionist approaches. This artist is Claude Monet, who carried out a wide series of paintings dedicated to the 'Cathedral of Rouen', registered in front of his facade, seen from different angles and at different times of the day. Made between 1892 and 1894, these pieces were exhibited in 1895 as 'recent works', being very well received by critics, as Georges Clemenceau showed in his article with the resounding title 'Revolution of the Cathedrals'. Similar situations could be pointed out in other outstanding artists, even before Monet, such as J.M.W. Turner, who worked out multiple aspects and versions with the sea as the protagonist. Apparently, in the last moments of his life he confessed that "the sun is God", that shows his special interest and obsession with the study of the impressions of light, placing Turner, along with Monet, as the two greatest artists of light. In a similar way, after these masters, new ones continued this challenge of light in the work of art, giving diverse and novel results. We can find these examples in the works of one of the founders of the New York´s School, Mark Rothko, this time from expositions of abstract expressionism, in the late forties and early fifties, where light arises from within the work, it is not the fruit of a source outside of it.

This preamble, which we have decided to incorporate in this text, we offer as a prelude to the presentation of a new artist on the Canary Islands´ art scene, DENIS SINIAUSKI, who incorporated into our artistic context in 2015, moving to Tenerife from Eastern Europe, from the capital of the Soviet socialist republic of Belarus, Minsk, where he was born in 1975. Denis studied art, architecture and design since his early age. Along with the interest for art, the artist gets involved with the sea, and in this new field he also conducts extensive training in diving and sailing. As a sailing captain he graduates in Belarus and extends his studies at the RYA School in Great Britain. Since 2010 he has taken part in study trips through the Black Sea, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. As a result of that activity and profession, that Denis carries parallel to his artistic work, he comes to Canary Islands in 2015 with forty years of age.

For the first time we met Denis in the first quarter of 2018 during the opening of his exhibition 'DEPTH', dedicated to the depth of the blue color of the sea, which took part at the Casino de Santa Cruz de Tenerife on the first of March. The artist himself expressed the meaning and his approach, which he had carried out in the exposed paintings: "The concept of depth is a synonym to my thought. The apparent simplicity, the simplicity of a beginning contains a great depth. It has to do with a minimalist content. And, of course, with the sea itself, everything that it houses from its surface to its mysterious depths. The surface of the ocean can be very different. In short, this series reflects the beauty of depth. " (1)

(1) Interview with Denis Siniauski, by Noemí María Feo Rodríguez, 'The Belarusian look of Siniauski. Land, island and sea ', in Tourism and culture of Canarias.es, Santa Cruz de Tenerife 2018