Rafa Silvares Study, 2024

Time appears arrested, space collapsed onto itself in Rafa Silvares work. Amidst the seductiveness of its smooth surface and the visual pleasure of expanses of brilliant color, we have an intuitive understanding of the allegorical nature of these works. Their frozen movements evoke the end of a belief in the inherent benefit of progress: the static fluidity of its masses, be they natural-looking formations (water, mud, lava), expelled from human-made machinery (pipes, pistons, washers), or waves of sound are in a kind of limbo. Caught in the paradox of agitated stillness, liquids overflow, bursting bright from pistons or pipes, from the ground or the sky. The absence of depictions of human beings in the paintings is counteracted by the feeling of looking at a human-made world.

Silvares paints the shiny metal of his human-made motifs lovingly, with an eye for precisionist effect but also for the beauty of its abstracted shapes. Triangles, rectangles, slivers of black and shades of grey together form the impression of seductive silvery surfaces. A recurring motif, the metal exerts symbolic power: its hard shell rendered as lustrous reflective surfaces, evoking the promise of modernity, and its scientistic notions of cleanliness, the surgical or antiseptic.