Truth and Line to Paint

Almost a hundred years ago, abstraction pioneer painter and theorist Wassily Kandinsky wrote the second of his seminal treatises on the principles of art, Point and Line to Plane in 1926. Here he fleshed out the value, purpose, and role of lines — from its antithetical existence versus a point, all the way to its necessity in the grander, more complex planes in the universe of image-making.

Bert Antonio is no theorist, but he is in many ways more complex than just a painter albeit a simple process: line, cut, draw, and paint. He chooses the sizes of paper in such a way that he can maximize the space it can occupy, as well as expand it beyond what is to be expected.

Beginning with a basic but very potent palette, he creates elements in a myriad of combinations where each becomes unique in seemingly random movements and moments that eventually come together; and they stand for the countless relationships that we build, keep, lose, and cherish — each one a page, one day in a diary. 

Everything is connected, nothing is simply untitled. Harnessing this bond, he names his works to impart an abstraction in themselves, working on invisible dualities of things meant to be said, and that which is better left unsaid. 

Truth is, sometimes you can’t attribute anything to more than plain ol’ good luck. That element of chance leaves much room to doubt whether hard work, genius, or talent really amounts to anything — but we find consolation in the opportunity to investigate. The artwork becomes an experiment with countless variables, that in a process of elimination allows us to get to the core of things, to what really matters.

Kandinsky believed that geometrical, physical, aesthetic, and spiritual concepts coexist naturally, and these are observable in Antonio’s movements: a geometric line, a physical cut, an aesthetic drawing, and a spiritual painting. If the task at hand is the pursuit of the sublime, of originality over style and in between the lines, then let us observe as the truth unfolds.