Teresa Del Conde “Alberto Montaño, The Magic of Today”

The most striking feature of Alberto Montaño's recent paintings is the use of abstract constructions which evoke elements that transcend the shapes and colors and their distribution on the canvas surface. In earlier works the figure appeared always decoded, complementing the color areas, the pastings, the lines and dots that have now acquired a principal function. He is still using collage, brown paper strategically worked into folds and creases that actually form a fine drawing on the surface which is invaded by the lines and painted shapes as extensions of the main elements that rule the composition. The measured use of gold pigment on certain areas of the paper contributes to create a tension between the complementing opposites. On one hand, the paint application is brutalist as in the "New Savages”, on the other the inherent nature of the delicate paper work contradicts (and at the same time shades) the scattered force of the pictorical impulse. Even without recurring to the titles: Pink Goddess, Goldfloat, Snake and Bones, etc. it is still possible to imply through the formal structures that the group of works evokes what Jung called "spirit-nature". This is a term that designates natural and antinatural elements when in conjunction with diverse motives that in Montaño's work are perceived as mythical and ritualistic. This condition added to the generally large format of the paintings creates an atmosphere with magic-primitive connotations that exist, for instance, in the fetish. But Montaño's fetishes not only allude to ethnic or marginal tribes, but also to contemporary fetishes, although, as I have said before, no representative image incurs in them.

Undeniably the painter knows how to use, in a very personal way, devices that had their maximum effect during the culmination of Abstract Expressionism in the United States: Gottlieb, James Brooks, Rothko come to mind but under different stylistic conditions, much more related perhaps with the new German painting than with American Informalism or European Tachisme.

Color, on the contrary, reminds us of Mexico, its toys and handcrafts, its village altar pieces and, more than anything, the bold ornamental combinations that enter the "kitch" conglomerate. Such a handling of color has characterized Montaño almost from the begining of his artistic career and coincides with that of other young artists who have sought to liberate color from aesthetic ties, thus paradoxically creating through this purpose a new aesthetic movement with many followers.

However, the color in Montaño (a born designer) never produces radical discordances. A certain moderation leads him to look for complementaries and extract from these the greatest possibilities by contrasting them with black. At the same time, although the space of the composition is dense and saturated, the forms relate neatly among themselves in spite of their intended irregularity. As a result of these characteristics, Montaño's painting is not quite visually aggressive, notwithstanding the sensual impact that it undoubtedly produces.