MATHEMATICS TO PULL OUT TEETH

JOSÉ LOUREIRO

"Mathematics to pull out teeth" will perhaps produce the sound of a small sparkle, beige and with an indefinable smell. This title does not mean anything specifically. In itself, it is neither an easy thing (a small matter), nor a nonsense, to want to align four words, whatever they are. "Mathematics" and "teeth" do not go together; although the purest mathematical mind is not immune to a nagging toothache. That is the tragedy: sooner or later, everything comes together. Forcing the senses is therefore useless: things discover themselves, in their smallness or their greatness - greatness being rare.

Although they have no specific identity, the figures that appear in these paintings are portraits, in the strictest and most prosaic sense that the word «portrait» has taken in Western art. Each figure has two eyes. Seeing more than two eyes - or one - in a face, it’s an illusion of the viewer. An invasive, homogeneous light, of unknown origin, impossible to filter and permanently on, penetrates through dilated pupils, impeccably round. It was necessary to dilate the pupils of the subjects to reach the inner color of the eyeball and make it visible. Painting allows this. 

Sometimes, two characters try to identify each other, to touch each other. There is no preliminary study, neither scenario, nor choreography, just the primary impulse to touch. They touch each other so as not to feel irretrievably lost in a soliloquy that is longer than normal. Even rudimentary, each touch involves a calculation, which seems to systematically miss the target. Hilarious errors of hilarious mathematics.

José Loureiro