Painted Hands

Abstract

Through the study of Gaya´s paintings and writings this article proposes a broader reflection on the characteristic of the image in general. Pursuing this intention, the very notion of “reality“ and the distinction “reality / painting“ will be questioned. The painting is always (of) another painting: hand over hand (painting coats by hand). In turn, the authorship, the “the author´s hand”, will operate the surgery of the artwork, not by adding but by removing layers of paint; the layers of an artistic culture that has made of painting an indispensible double of an autonomous and self-sufficient reality. Gaya‘s work is an evidence of that operation that reveals the hollow of a distance, the cut of a spacing in the very dimension of the “real“, in its intimate constitution which, ultimately, is called to become the essential motif of his painting.