Such is the case in the paintings, drawings and monoprints of Chilean-born Desy Safán-Gerard, who brings an especial dimension to the worlds of fantasy and form. Despite its deconstructive conceptual bias, postmodern painting has until recently relied heavily on the formalist, cubist and realist conventions of modernism. In Safán-Gerard's work, by contrast, we see a different source of form and a descriptive approach which is at once more fluid and spatially expansive. The territory her work engages is of great interest at the present time to young artists working at the edge of possibility. In a similar way the work of Roberto Matta, another Chilean, is just now receiving considerable attention for the plasticity of its visual elements and the manner in which he develops its psychology. The important distinction to be made about the painting of Safán-Gerard and Matta is that hers explores expressionist fantasy without ever becoming truly surrealist; that is without the use of realistic description to illustrate psychological themes. Interestingly, in the work of each artist we experience an open approach to space which is unattainable by familiar structural and compositional means. Her work declares itself in a deeply expressive yet abstract level of signification without recourse to full blown illusionism.

Seen as abstract fantasy, the work of Desy Safán-Gerard actively participates in the dialogue sorrounding the 'new abstraction' and its inclusive appropriation of imagery and a variety of visual properties and compositional strategies. As one views Safán-Gerard's accomplishment in painting, drawing and monoprint over an extended period of time, one is immediately struck by the fact that she is first and foremost a luminist. Her primary medium is light and not volume. For her, expressive meaning is revealed in the world of light much like it was for Tiepolo, it does not come out of the darkness like in a Rembrandt. Almost all of her art works appear at first as a light field in which forms are generated. Even her most highly chromatic work is charged with light energy. In actual fact, her paintings appear to emanate an internal light which suffuses pictorial space and imagery. The images glow without the specificity of chiaroscuro and light logic coming into being as ethereal embodiments of the imagination. Even the light line seen in much of her work has the effect of dephysicalizing images while at the same time abstracting and irradiating them as in a photographic negative. It is a transparent world of multileveled suggestion. This synchronous experience of open positive and negative forms leads us to experience meaning in a different dimension, one that seems more like a dream which approaches the world of pure imagination.

Interestingly Safán-Gerard's work supplants geometric structure with pattern, rhyming and organic shapes. She is therefore able to make available to us the illogical structures of experience as a form of fantasy with mystical overtones. Her work is highly complex and operates on a variety of levels anticipating complex reactions. The idea of landscape which underlays many of her compositions, is quickly transposed into the idea of internal landscape as well. Rebus-like structures and pictographic signification seen in much of her work and the totemic organization of forms present in the recent monoprints provide us with ways of connecting ideational content with meaning derived from the act of making; the importance of the pictographic for instance, as a mark and as a sign.

There is in all of Safán-Gerard's work a well earned sense of effortlessness. Images simply appear, often in a powerful rudimentary form, reminiscent of artists like Dubuffet, Klee or Altoon. These images probe the psyche in profound ways, mirroring conscious and unconscious experience for us. Doodle-like forms often serve as entry points into her psychological/mental landscapes.

In some of Safán-Gerard's textured canvases there is no imagery at all and we are brought close to the physical nature of being. Deep forces related to the earth and our bodies are shown through the use of texture and density. In this world light becomes temperature, time and process. We see and feel earth's volcanic capillaries; ethereal experience is made palpable once again. Desy Safán-Gerard is a prescient artist whose work is a gift to us all. I have always liked the idea that painting is about the conversion of human experience into the experience of the paint. As you view the work of Desy Safán-Gerard you will find yourself converting paint back into a profoundly human experience.

Roland Reiss Dean,Department of Art
CLAREMONT COLLEGES, CA. May, 1998