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With caution I went, approaching the work of
Tito, alias Juan Antonio Gómez. With caution,
yes, because full of deformations, of
suppositions and pre-judgments like most of the
mortals, I doubt and mistrust the commercial
success of the artists. Like most of the
mortals, I was erroneous and I’m not ashamed to
recognize it.
In the six previous series, Tito was lead by
his luminous and audacious instinct for color,
subordinating the forms to the vibrant Antillean
shades, to such a point that the women, the
lovers and the beings in his compositions could
have being interpreted as an excuse to release
the palette and give free rein to the fires of
the Tropic, and the reds, the greens, the
oranges and the yellows summoned up their own
life, prevailing with insolence in a sensual,
playful dance of the senses, daring indeed, and
arranged not to yield an apex to superficial
conceptuality, going beyond the canon and the
intellectual vanity.
The erotic and ancestral Tan-Tan which resonates
in his painting is an invitation to jump out, to
be dragged by that voluptuous and insistent wave
that emanates from each composition, and until
then, the color written in capital letters,
absolute and unquestionable, was the main
character of his work. And I say until then
because, after experimenting with a brief and
suggestive phase of style, where color seemed to
take terrain over the defined forms, Tito comes
back in full charge with a new collection,
Untitled, Tito Without Title, and even with the
limiting absence of a defined name his work
denotes an ascending jump and obtains a stirring
balance while redeeming the outline and on the
canvas the lines are flying free, and the
composition and the color are this time
accomplices who do not compete with each other,
but are combined causing a continuous tension
without conflicts, arranged to coexist with the
intention and exceeding the margins of the
image, and when the artist only appeals to ocher
juxtaposed between black and white, the vibrant
fineness summons the calming reflection and even
in black, white or ocher, Tito continues being a
born colorist and there is no failure in the
style, no, it cannot have failure in the
deliberate deepening and it is not possible to
speak of creative maturity, a term that is used
to border the work of novice artists, eluding
the commitment.
In this phase Tito has exposed on the surface of
the canvas all the creative ingredients of
previous exhibitions and this time he aims
towards a much greater light and it is his hand,
the one that governs, subordinating forms and
colors to the intensity of his intention. Having
the human figure as the main reason of his
motivations, he applies the resources of the
abstract without allowing the abstraction to
dominate completely, and over the decomposition
of lines the tropical eroticism overflows,
awarding us with its festive emanations.
We Caribbeans are winners, we always win
because, over the shady darkness of Tanathos, we
impose the healing victory of Eros and life is
with no doubt the true protagonist, rising
victoriously in the explosion of outlines and
colors of these works of art. Tito, alias Juan
Antonio Gómez, is a son of the Caribbean and
beyond the pain and the losses, a son of the
Caribbean celebrates with fruition the magic of
life and perhaps without knowing it, or without
pretending a thesis about it, Tito has signed a
pact with that truth and it is that alliance
which is seen in this collection without title,
because what is true needs neither to be
defended nor titled.
Miami, Winter 2005
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