ANTONIO BERNI & NAHUEL VECINO, WORKS ON PAPER

by FRANCISCO GARAMONA

Maybe it is this the shape of your life

It’s night, but the moonlight illuminates the scene. On one side of the great room there is a table where pencils and brushes rest, colored knobs, notebooks crammed with drawings, fabrics nailed to the walls with half-finished paintings. In a corner of that house-workshop a young artist dreams of prodigious works that let the world glimpse its idealistic and romantic character. On the street you can hear the wings of a bat flapping, there is almost no one at this time, a lonely car gets lost when it accelerates, distant voices are heard, but it doesn’t matter.
...

The young man does not know that a protective spirit visits him every time he sleeps to talk about his favorite subjects, ranging from figuration to the importance of drawing, while teaching him to draw vigorous and real lines, where their shared world is present. He is the senior artist, and the dreamer, his young disciple. They speak of the stars and the firmament, of the pink insistence of Rococo, of the ruins of Palmyra and the Pompeian frescoes, of Tiepolo, Giotto, Piero della Francesca, Delacroix and Titian. The young man updates him with news, gossips, artworld currents affairs, the two laugh in complicity. They walk by a lake and go away to enter a black swirl. The mirror of representation weeps silently and contracts, as an opaque yet colorful universe expands in its fissures ... It snows in some distant village where the two find a moment to cross their brushes. They think there are so many adventures they could do together. It is dawn now and the spirit of the old painter retreats until it becomes intangible.
The young artist wakes up. He remembers images of his dreams, recalls some mysterious phrases while having breakfast, which he assumes he must have read somewhere sometime. He feels happy while he meditates and does a little exercise. After a while he begins to paint without knowing that someone placed the weight of a legend in his hands.