Barrio Escalante, San José

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Lenguas Celestes, by Claudio Fantini. A background of vertical striations, resembling weathered slate or a wall battered by humidity, imposes a quiet gravity upon the square format.

Claudio Fantini

Lenguas Celestes

Technique
Acrylic/Canvas
Dimensions
120 × 120 cm
Status
Available
Palette
slate gray, bone white, celadon green, indigo blue, brown
Brushwork
Superimposed glazes, vertical scrapes, and material rubbings of opaque and translucent pigment.

Curatorial analysis

A background of vertical striations, resembling weathered slate or a wall battered by humidity, imposes a quiet gravity upon the square format. Across this dense, scraped surface emerge, like ectoplasmic emanations or faded anatomical schematics, two presences of mineral whiteness. They do not drift passively in the void; they are suspended in an almost surgical moment of connection, held together by a graphic tension that articulates the entire space.

To the left, a hybrid figure with spindly limbs and a bulbous thorax extends an exceedingly sharp snout toward the upper zone. From this tip descends a translucent filament that grazes the left wing of a second structure with millimeter precision: a winged body, midway between a sacred insect and a laboratory mechanism. Suspended from this apparatus hangs a solitary indigo blue drop, a dense, polished element that concentrates the canvas's light and contrasts with the general porosity of the support. Below, an organic mass of cartilaginous appearance seems prepared to collect or shelter this descending liquid, guarded by two small dark silhouettes resembling valves or folded wings.

The pictorial matter operates here through subtraction and glazing. The acrylic neither saturates nor decorates; it scrapes, drips, and reveals preceding layers, generating a greenish halo of oxidized patina that runs along the upper and lower edges like a weathered frame. That vibration in celadon and brown undertones belies the coldness of the dominant gray and endows the scene with a fossil-like quality.

There is in this painting the distinct pause of a transmutation halted midway. Situated between medical dissection and hermetic ritual, the bodies act as conductors of invisible fluids, reminding us that visual mystery does not need resolution to move the viewer, but rather must hold itself in a rigorous, fragile, and imminent equilibrium.

Lenguas Celestes

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