BEING THERE often seems complex. That complexity grows considerably when we speak of good painting, of excellence. And it reaches its fullest complexity when it comes to BEING THERE on the ever more crowded stage of contemporary art. Rafa Forteza (Mallorca, 1955) IS THERE, without a doubt, and not by chance. The effort has been enormous, sustained over many years. Without wishing to go into matters that have little or nothing to do with the work, the creative act or emotions, I have always argued that painting should be lived rather than understood. Painting is far too serious to be trivialised and stripped of its power to change life itself, for better or worse, with empty words stringing together hollow concepts. It is a mystery I hold on to, and one we should all hold on to, when we are invited to enjoy and live a good exhibition in which painting has joined forces with collage, the objet trouvé and sculpture.
The name Rafa Forteza is synonymous with an invitation to contemplation, to letting yourself be caught by a body of work that can stop time. To stand before good painting, unmistakably by Forteza, is to forget for a moment the world we live in and begin to live in a unique universe, born of the painter’s struggle with the blank canvas, with everything still to say and no limits to the act of painting. Everything IS. It IS everything. All or nothing is Rafa Forteza’s creed when he immerses himself in the creative act. It is a physical, emotional act, often raw, violent, heart-rending, visceral, unconscious, infinite, pleasurable. Forteza delights in painting and sculpture as much as he suffers them. Because painting and sculpture have had to be lived. It is something Forteza knows a great deal about, and it has allowed him to develop a parallel world, a refuge, a pictorial altar to which only believers rise. He believes, he creates, but above all, he lives. Tireless, he long ago reached a prominent, privileged position, with a body of work that bears his own name. Rafa Forteza pays no heed to time or space. They are limitations that could hinder his well-known overflowing creativity. The painted surface seems never to end. I deeply admire his great ability to let suffering and playfulness coexist in a single work, seemingly settling in layers, like skin covering the most visceral self. Forteza has created a unique universe of his own without letting it swallow him, making it his. This appropriation has allowed him, and still allows him, to BE THERE, knowing he will be there until he has nothing left to say, which seems impossible and uncertain (as his alter egos well know, born to greatly widen his field of creative action). That universe knows no limits in colour, in pieces of collage or in the most unexpected element. That full universe has been taken over by beings with souls and lives of their own, who are now part of the imagery of contemporary art. A universe of great richness, created with craft, with blind, unconscious faith, with an energy that is hard to control and hardly controllable. Time inevitably stops when you face Rafa Forteza’s work; it halts, and space takes on another dimension. It is physically impossible to experience Rafa Forteza’s work in a hurry; his work stops you in your tracks. You are there without BEING THERE. You see without seeing. You feel, simply by feeling. You are no longer outside the work, because you are inside it. It is an impossible world, and at the same time real, alive, vigorous, fiercely pleasurable. The work IS THERE, always there. The painter lives by and for the search that leads him to growth and sets the tempo, as in a piece of music; he seems to find in colour, in the brushstroke, in the pieces that fit into the whole, the impossible balance, harmony. Forteza has known how to remain in time, in all times. Generously, he opens the doors of his pictorial, now vital, world to us once again with this exhibition, giving us an experience that takes us away from the immediate, the imposed and, often, the affected. Once again Rafa Forteza allows us to live art with devotion. Time, I insist, stops; there is no rush.

Bel Font. Mallorca, May 2023