R&M Jam Session
Prof. Francisco Javier San Martín
According to a classic definition by critic George Frazier, Jam Session refers to 'an informal get-together of musicians with temperamental affinity to play, for their own amusement, a music not written, nor rehearsed'. It could be argued, that the music they play, which basks in the very desire of making it, is alien to the idea of an organised project. The activity becomes an opportunity, a mouthful of shared humility, that turns the individual ego a bit more transparent. To collaborate is to lower one´s own expectations for a particular outcome, to open up and learn from others. Raisa Raekallio and Misha del Val have been making their pictures as a duet in Lapland for several years now, following similar principles to those of a jam session, in white quilted lands, like in the black Harlem.
I had a chance to enjoy a fruit of this collaboration, entrusted at my place for some months: it portraits, in a modest formal, a wild beast, perhaps a dog or a bear, in a combination of golden ochres and gelid blues; with that cold light that seems to come in through all the chinks, revealing the painting has been created near snow. Beyond the animal appearance, the term that came into my mind, the first time I saw it in a bar in Bilbao, was incandescent; as if possessed by an emotional fever, sort of when the temperature of iron reaches such heights that the burning reds give way to an almost glacial white. And also the idea that painting is heated desire, even when practised in extreme temperatures: a longing to repeat what is loved, be it a feral creature that looks straight at you, the mask of a red-lipped goddess, or bodies travelling through constellations with stars in their ankles. I've returned the painting to its authors and now the audience can appreciate it in this exhibition at Torre de Ariz, draw their own conclusions, and maybe tremble before the animal they see on the image and possibly have within, without even knowing it.
R&M´s creative process is generated by a three-sided love relationship: between the artists themselves, and between the couple and painting. The seduction processes, which occur in this fertile territory of exchange, crystallises in jointly made pictures. A palette to mix the colours, a table for food, a wooden house to live in and work. As we know, love involves commitment: in this case, not only to the dainty mechanisms of the blossoming picture, but also to the shared thrust, force, motivation that drives the artists to keep wanting to make painting. In this mental and physical shared space, the studio isn't just a working place, it becomes a condominium for conspiratorial intimacy. Ray and Charles Eames had the privilege of building their own house, the place where they would live and produce all their work in collaboration for decades. Maybe that´s the highest an artist couple can aspire to. Aino Marsio and her husband Alvar Aalto, in a closer context to where the paintings in this exhibition have been made, opened In Helsinki the Artek shops to commercialise the products of their work: a rational, as much as emotional, collaboration.
R&M continue the saga painting galactic refugees, figures belonging to no homeland, sheltered in golden space blankets, gently glowing like the arctic midnight sun. Vulnerable and dignified, exposed and solemn, packed together with a stunned gaze, that reflects their long journey, R&M may have an inkling it's them, lost in the immensity of the world and found again by the fireplace in a corner of their studio. Through Skype Raisa explains, while painting these beings she feels compassion and needs to nurture it and paint it only through improvisation, responding moment to moment to what crops up on the picture: if she feels bounded by the idea of a project, this energy of empathy with the characters gets blocked and the magic vanishes into thin air. Misha in turn, she adds, tends to be more reflective over each stage of the process, and she feels comfortable with this share of responsibilities. Indeed, a jam session does not imply the dissolution of the personalities of the members involved, but precisely a sharper definition of each´s potentialities in the common flow, the destiny of the music they are making.
I had a chance to enjoy a fruit of this collaboration, entrusted at my place for some months: it portraits, in a modest formal, a wild beast, perhaps a dog or a bear, in a combination of golden ochres and gelid blues; with that cold light that seems to come in through all the chinks, revealing the painting has been created near snow. Beyond the animal appearance, the term that came into my mind, the first time I saw it in a bar in Bilbao, was incandescent; as if possessed by an emotional fever, sort of when the temperature of iron reaches such heights that the burning reds give way to an almost glacial white. And also the idea that painting is heated desire, even when practised in extreme temperatures: a longing to repeat what is loved, be it a feral creature that looks straight at you, the mask of a red-lipped goddess, or bodies travelling through constellations with stars in their ankles. I've returned the painting to its authors and now the audience can appreciate it in this exhibition at Torre de Ariz, draw their own conclusions, and maybe tremble before the animal they see on the image and possibly have within, without even knowing it.
R&M´s creative process is generated by a three-sided love relationship: between the artists themselves, and between the couple and painting. The seduction processes, which occur in this fertile territory of exchange, crystallises in jointly made pictures. A palette to mix the colours, a table for food, a wooden house to live in and work. As we know, love involves commitment: in this case, not only to the dainty mechanisms of the blossoming picture, but also to the shared thrust, force, motivation that drives the artists to keep wanting to make painting. In this mental and physical shared space, the studio isn't just a working place, it becomes a condominium for conspiratorial intimacy. Ray and Charles Eames had the privilege of building their own house, the place where they would live and produce all their work in collaboration for decades. Maybe that´s the highest an artist couple can aspire to. Aino Marsio and her husband Alvar Aalto, in a closer context to where the paintings in this exhibition have been made, opened In Helsinki the Artek shops to commercialise the products of their work: a rational, as much as emotional, collaboration.
R&M continue the saga painting galactic refugees, figures belonging to no homeland, sheltered in golden space blankets, gently glowing like the arctic midnight sun. Vulnerable and dignified, exposed and solemn, packed together with a stunned gaze, that reflects their long journey, R&M may have an inkling it's them, lost in the immensity of the world and found again by the fireplace in a corner of their studio. Through Skype Raisa explains, while painting these beings she feels compassion and needs to nurture it and paint it only through improvisation, responding moment to moment to what crops up on the picture: if she feels bounded by the idea of a project, this energy of empathy with the characters gets blocked and the magic vanishes into thin air. Misha in turn, she adds, tends to be more reflective over each stage of the process, and she feels comfortable with this share of responsibilities. Indeed, a jam session does not imply the dissolution of the personalities of the members involved, but precisely a sharper definition of each´s potentialities in the common flow, the destiny of the music they are making.
