 |  | SALVADOR MONTO'
| | Back to the Big Apple
Óscar Fernández
Cuadernos del Sur, marzo 2004
The city of skyscrapers figures largely in his paintings, which competently wander through the intricacies of figurative representation. But the fact that it appears in his work has little to do with a reliable reproduction of the New York urban essence. It is more a question of frenzy, speed, social crossbreeding, an chaos on the streets. One should not be taken in by the native iconography either – phone booths, cabs, glass walls, and endless avenues-, which has been explored by more anglophile realists such as Richard Estes.
He seems committed to not giving much away and, without doubt, this is his greatest achievement : the cosmopolitan folklore of the city impregnates the visitor with a deliberate approximation and filtering of the view. It is odd that there and hardly any people along the avenues of his paintings, vehicles seems to stand still, gives us an almost recorded image of the city. This is all true to a recurring idea that has become practically the structure of his work, consisting in a search – assumed unsuccessful from the very beginning – for all that is permanent and long lasting.
It is a question of not worrying too much about the latest happenings, that maddening search for an aesthetic experience in real time ; that slogan of “it is happening now, you are witness”. On the contrary, it is a question of resisting what the Germans call zeitgeist ( the spirit of the times ) . Only an absent view ( behind which lies a Spanish pictorial legacy ) that tends to observe all that is inert and still life, manages to avoid the photographic effect of the immediate to which many artist conform.
Montó 's work alludes to the permanent rules and shapes of the metropolis, rather than to the dazzling gestalt of a “ city – sing”. Like Harvey Keitel in the film Smoke, the painter is interested in the darker corners of Brooklyn or the Empire State Building with the real day- to-day experiences of those who live there, far from the latest trends in tourist attractions. In this way, Montó observes the city as a New Yorker would, removing the tourist mask. Ultimately, this was the radical ambition of the character ( in Smoke ) , to photograph the same place every day at the same time, to go beyond the idea of a geographical postcard and re-express it as a space full of memories, events and feelings.
The same idea is pursued in other scenes, which appear to us a strong and solid shape , values that figure throughout all his work. In fact, we could extrapolate certain dispersed references of Montó which, despite referring to visual fields as contemporary as the city of New York, are presented to us as a tireless quest for the classical harshness of shape, for the formulation of a strict paradigm of representation in which the discipline of composition and subtleness of lines make the features even preponderant.
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