Figure II

“[...] The series of the Carretéis (Spools) starts in 1958: the motif, which twice refers to the time (as rotational motion and as a childhood memory), emerges and sinks again into the pictorial matter which, precisely because of this ability to swallow and expel, is the very embodiment of time. But it is a staunched time that no longer flows naturally. The picture is a marsh. The oil painting, which had been one of the most sophisticated products of Western culture, has become inert, almost excremental matter. It is necessary to dig into it to extract remnants, memories, what might have remained.
To paint, then, will be nostalgia of the painting. It is nostalgia, however, that should be taken seriously, diligently studying the ancient procedures, using the best resources. Hence the refusal to mix the oil with ‘low’ materials (enamel, tar, sand) as used in many Brutalist or expressionist paintings of the time. It would not make sense, from the point of view of Iberê, to simulate by contamination what was already a matter of fact. The oil painting already contained in itself the historical agents of its decomposition. In regard to the new ways of producing images, it had become opaque, viscous and slow. What was brightness had turned into shadow. The relentless exploitation of colors resulted, after all, in black. But it is a striated black, translucent in its opacity, contaminated by all colors it covers. Stated differently, the painting of Iberê expresses a modernization that came too late, and melts at the same time as it forms. It was born already as a paradise lost. [...]”
Lorenzo Mammí, Iberê Camargo: as horas [o tempo como motivo] (Porto Alegre: Fundação Iberê Camargo, 2014), 84.