Sueño

The dream was Surrealism’s favorite theme. In this work by Rodolfo Abularach, the dream appears as a state of perennial uncertainty. An isolated eye is neither open nor completely closed; it appears in a double state of vigilance and drowsiness. The eyelid rests serenely while the pupil remains visible and alert. Critic Marta Traba considered how the artist’s attention to the formal and symbolic qualities of the circle emerged out of his interest in Zen cosmology. She further asserted that through a poetics of vision, Abularach rescued the oneiric and symbolic dimensions of Guatemalan indigenous forms of knowledge. Mostly self-taught, Abularach began to draw at a young age. In 1958, he received a scholarship to study at the Arts Students League and Graphic Art Center in New York, where he eventually established his career. Abularach’s anatomical rendering of the eye through modeling and cross hatchings reveals his mastering of the most challenging print processes, which also happens to be the closest to direct mark making and drawing. The image’s graphic quality and its reference to the act of unconscious seeing reveals the tensions between figuration and materiality. This work suggests that visual and physical elements function in relation to one another, much like the relationship between oil and water, so essential in the lithographic technique.

This text was created in collaboration with the University of Maryland Department of Art History & Archaeology and written by Patricia Ortega-Miranda.