A Single Stick Does Not Make a Mount

INTERVIEW BY MARINA RISS: A SINGLE STICK DOES NOT MAKE A MOUNT

When I meet Víctor Alexis Puig and we started speak I listened carefully as he told me about his life and painting, he told me that he was convinced to have found what truly gave him pleasure. For him to paint is risking his life daily, his fight between the blank canvas and him is a duel. Puig is a gladiator who constantly renews, his thirst to express drinks of the inexhaustible source of creativity where exclusions do not intimidate him, on the contrary, they stimulate him. This painter-sculptor is a man who does not believe in walls, his works are the hammers that are breaking the fence brick by brick to which they have tried to send him.

Q: I was particularly struck by the titles of your works, do you work from the titles or do you paint and then look for them?

A: I usually have an idea of what I am going to do although I prefer to work from the titles because that way the work acquires a more theatrical edge and gives me the way to underline what I want to emphasize in my message. A plastic work must be more than an object to decorate — I think it should be like a good book that every time you read it you reflect on it. Yes, in my work the title is maybe where I want it to be observed, the painting is like a forced foot and that way where the imagination begins to fly.

Q: Your training is part of self-learning, how much does it contribute or how much does it marginalize you?

A: Being self-taught could be something highly questioned regarding the type of education that is needed. In my case I have studied a lot, I have had endless hours of practice. I have taken what I think I have needed to find my way to express myself. Not having entered an art school has allowed me not to fill myself with information that sometimes does not contribute. It has even allowed me selectivity to gradually incorporate knowledge with practice and that has given creativity, has even strengthened my style, the recognition that each painter seeks when you look at a work that immediately shows its stamp. Arriving belatedly to painting has not harmed me at all, on the contrary, it has given me certainties that this is what I want to do for the rest of my life — make painting against the stereotypes that they try to impose on us.

Q: When I look at your painting I feel a lot of rebellion. You told me that the sketch is a very free and spontaneous act and that many times you prefer not to do it and build the work from random. What is first for you? The content or random?

A: The random is a pretext, it is a posture that allows me not to mold myself to anything. Very personally I think that the closer a work is to that involuntary act called sketch, the freer it is. Painting is building a new world and when I go into it I am its architect, although I try to make it look like the man that I am. I have things that affect me or that make me happy. A painting does not live in an uninhabited world, it lives in a world with many things to change.

Q: I sometimes see sadness and certain loneliness in your work, for example in "The snow also gets dirty". Is that child you?

A: It is not me although it carries something of me and even much. This is a piece where the message goes pretending with the title and I use a visual metaphor to denounce racism, exclusion. You know Marina, think we could agree on many things if we simply saw each other face to face. In the eyes of God we are all equals. I have a very ambitious dream — that one day we all call ourselves brothers. Painting has the gift of uniting: when two people look at a painting they can think different but at that time they have a point that reconciles them. Art can be very lonely but it can also unite and ignore differences.

Q: Why an "Eternal prospect"?

A: Simple — you cannot spend your whole life making plans for when you have the chance to do something. Life changes in the blink of an eye. The time is now, look for your dream, fight for it and believe it. Do not leave it for when you have time because when you have time you may not be able to. The potential will not accompany you for the rest of your life. Declare yourself in rebellion against what you cannot do. Today look for the now and you will stop being a promise.

Q: About the title of this exhibition "A single stick does not make a mount" — how are you, are you a stick or are you a mount?

A: Sometimes I am a stick and sometimes I am a mount. In some moments I need the loneliness of a long distance runner because although for some loneliness is a bad counselor, I am never alone. My works accompany me and they are my mounts where my alive, my dead, my friends, my enemies, my dissatisfactions, illusions and disappointments live, without establishing an enchanted mount so real where total happiness does not yet exist but we must not tire of searching.