Flat Totems for Orgasmic Freedoms and Other Seeds

For his first exhibition in the new Parisian space of cadet capela, Humberto Poblete-Bustamante pushes us to change our outlook and our expectations. Flat Totems for Orgasmic Freedoms and Other Seeds dives into the heart of an instinctive, absolute and living painting.

On the canvas, all the movements — erasing, bifurcating, covering — give life to new forms, trace new paths. There is no plan that precedes the act. Only the reading of the present moment, of the surface of the canvas, of its geography. Or even more: its intimate geology.
The gesture becomes the subject of the painting. Forms disappear, experience takes over. Nothing is preconceived, nothing is planned. We free ourselves from predefined forms and from an idealized abstraction. “The brain is a mortuary machine”, explains Humberto Poblete-Bustamante, “it forces us to see and desire perfect forms. ” By accepting disaster, imperfection, happenstance, Humberto Poblete-Bustamante frees us from our expectations formatted by the screens and Instagram filters and by the fashions and trends of the time. The shapes are not geometric. They are not in competition. They have no outlines or decoration. The canvas become a flat surface where the painting can fully grown, just as it is. Therefore, in its very presence, the painting is not condemned to remain in the center: it also arises on the edges, on these usually neglected sides. In the margins, the painting becomes a frame for the painting. It becomes an absolute experience that takes place on the entire canvas.​

Humberto Poblete-Bustamante’s painting becomes a vital language, an instinctive breath always combined with the present. Using brushes, a knife or his fingers, Humberto Poblete-Bustamante takes possession of the territory of the canvas. He leaves his traces: horizontal “touches”, repeated on the large and small canvases, square or round. These touches become the marks of an absolute dedication — the painter’s devotion to his act.

Each gesture affirms his entire presence, the frenetic involvement of his whole body, the breaking of the usual frames and borders. As Humberto Poblete-Bustamante says: “Painting is my territory. It defines me”. Painting overflows into his life. Painting becomes life itself. In the shapes with infinite shades — spot, circle, point… In the colors — in expansion or in contraction… The relationship between Humberto Poblete-Bustamante and his painting is sensory, carnal. His gestures are never laborious but always instinctive. No trace of work here, just signs of life. And a certain mastery that balances his “laisser-aller”. This “physical” painting comes from afar – Humberto Poblete-Bustamante names the Venetian school, action painting, Pollock,… A tactile lineage of physical painters. Painting is what arises, what comes.

Humberto Poblete-Bustamante does not force any interpretation. Like with these phrases that name the paintings without ever becoming their descriptive titles: All your oblivions are wearing daisies, All those girls are breaking bricks with a blink, The silence of the neighborhood is the song of your glory, … The painter refuses to influence our eye on his work. He wants to set us free. 
To look at the painting of Humberto Poblete-Bustamante is to experience freedom. We are witnessing the eternal beginning of a perpetual painting, always more alive.​

Boris Bergmann