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In “FFFF,” his third solo present at Galería Erhardt Flórez, painter Guillermo Pfaff reveals a transparent shift in technique. In earlier exhibitions, the artist explored the pictorial prospects of imperfection and spontaneity in emphatic work of monochrome geometric shapes. The immediacy and disorientingly naive look of his canvases revealed the affect of Sean Scully, in whose Barcelona studio Pfaff as soon as labored as an assistant.
Each the conceptual and the technical method have modified considerably within the large-format collection “Minimal White” and “Most White” (all works 2023), 4 examples of which occupy the primary room of the gallery: sober, sparse expanses that exploit the chromatic prospects of a repertoire of summary shapes in several shades of grey, mixed as a kind of non-public alphabet in several preparations over uncooked canvas. Pfaff foregrounds the graphic factor by integrating his personal final title—quizzical for Spanish audio system, a problem underscored by the exhibition title—into the compositions.
In these works, the artist abandons his earlier linear and streamlined geometry and, in components of the image aircraft, permits corrections and pentimenti to counsel natural shapes nonetheless in flux. The tongue-in-cheek irony implicit on this narrative of the pictorial gesture, with all its deceit and its virtually cartoonish clumsiness, remembers the work of Philip Guston.
Coloration reappears within the smaller “Sampled Work,” which nod to the expressionist method of vital painters of the Spanish summary custom of the mid-twentieth century, similar to Esteban Vicente, José Guerrero, or, to a lesser extent, Gustavo Torner. These are considerate, elegant, and concise photographs, in a position to convey with minimal means the expressive maturity Pfaff now possesses.
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