Carlos Antonio de la Sierra

THE WORLD IN ACRYLIC

How does one visually document the environment? How can we trust the image when it becomes the perfect crime? How can we believe in photography if the captured instant is always the result of a transversal cut? The work of Armando Zesatti (Mexico City, 1967) brings these questions down like a guillotine poised above a tender neck. Complicit with photographic scenarios, the Zesattian world probes nature as though X-raying the instant—yet also as if, within its compulsive hyperrealism, something more than a fleeting imprint were at stake. We are confronted with the illusion of the real. And one must understand that illusions, sublimated through the incandescent universe of a meticulous brush, can speak more truths than reality itself.

Are the waves and their undertow what encapsulate Zesatti’s mysteries? Is it the green leaf and the caustic trunk that form the veil of his wager? Or are water and stone the foundations of the artist’s imaginary?

Armando Zesatti’s world in acrylic—a technical choice that favors the exuberance of nature—is an uncharted territory that reveals and outmaneuvers the onslaught of oblivion. Within this ecosystem, the elements guard the wind, preserve the flora, and reanimate life through river and rock. In its graphic lushness resides his green and eternal memory.

Armando Zesatti is also mentioned in the introduction of the book:

Armando Zesatti aims for the perfection of the real. Paradoxically, within this vulnerable pursuit lies his creative virtue: the blind spot of his eye that prevents him from seeing everything. Pacífico lacks not a single line, nor does it contain one in excess; the experience of the real extends beyond the sharp image. What lies behind painting? Is it more real than the fleeting nature of the gaze? In Cold Horizon, the sea reappears as an image of cycles, but as a wave held in suspension. Cluster of Palm Trees stands as a conciliation at the highest level. Mexican Ents¹. And Beach of the Cathedrals encapsulates Zesatti’s sleepless prayer: life in search of water, life in search of the time we never truly lose.

The exhibition presented in this volume does not seek to be either unique or definitive. Rather, it suggests a minimal yet representative and expansive parcel of contemporary Mexican visual art. It is situated, like many instances of human life, between the lightness of creation and the weight of craft; between the sublime nature of contemplation and the mundanity of the canvas; in other words, between dream and stone.