The architect Luis Barragán was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1902 and remained in his city of origin until graduating with a degree in engineering. At the end of the twenties and beginning of the thirties, with his studies completed and with a broad vision of the world, Barragán projected his first works under the influence of the Franco-German illustrator and landscape painter Ferdinand Bac (1859-1952). Bac was an unusual figure within the rationalist architecture that marked the first half of the 20th century. His fascination with Mediterranean gardens led him to publish two beautiful books of illustrations on architecture and landscaping: Les colombièrs y Jardins enchantés. Barragán studied both books and appropriated some of Bac’s stylistic solutions to, along with the ornamentation of the ranches and haciendas of Jalisco, present a personal vision of architecture. The González Luna House (today renamed Clavijero House) was an important product of this period. Another example is the Casa Franco, a construction of limited dimensions but, despite its small size, with clear echoes of Bac.

Since 2013, the Travesía Cuatro Gallery has had one of its three operating spaces in the city of Guadalajara, precisely, in the Casa Franco. In addition to its marked Moorish style, this building is characterized by a traditional pasta floor divided into 20 x 20 centimeter quadrants. The floor is a kind of perfectly regular chess board that covers the interior space of the house, composed exclusively of two colors: brown and pink. These tones coincide with the color palette of the works that Mariela Scafati has now installed in the gallery.

It is important to emphasize that the color pink became a distinctive dye in the architectural language of Luis Barragán. Since 1942, with the construction of Casa Ortega in the Tacubaya neighborhood of Mexico City, Barragán has used pink as an atmospheric and spatial element. But for our talented architect, pink is much more than that. With clear references to the color palette of rural Mexico, pink should be read as a special polysemous symbol. In fact, there is a myth that Barragán baptized it as Maravilla pink since, according to this, this shade is the most powerful and captivating cosmetic that can be used in modern architecture.

In Barragán’s visual universe, color is essentially paint, and we must read it that way if we want to interpret it correctly. It is not a question of giving a specific tone to a wall or an extended material, but, more strategically, of highlighting the fact of the painting itself. That is why Barragán is a painter of space. In it, paint is a defining component and, thanks to the monochromatic tones applied in various areas, contrasts and rhymes are distributed.

Within the framework of the contemporary art event Art Weekend-Guadalajara, Travesía Cuatro presents Mariela Scafati’s individual exhibition Painting, painting, painting. Thus, above the generous rooms of Casa Franco, an installation consisting of a set of nine brown frames suspended from the ceiling is presented. Going through the peat of browns, an inexplicable painting, entirely pink. In these two entrance rooms, the main theme of the exhibition is experienced directly and without hesitation.

Two textile pieces inhabit the next room: a kamishibai with a brown velvet ruffle and an oil painting with a soft quadrillé frame.

In Japan in the 1930s, the kamishibai or ‘paper theaters’ were presented as theatrical structures where the illustrations continued as the kamishibaiya gaito or storyteller progressed through the story. In the case of Mariela Scafati’s kamishibai, the illustrations are replaced by small colored canvases framed by successive waves of brown velvet, sewn by hand. Here, the manual leads to the close, to the proximity of the fabric resting on the lap, to the repeated movement of the needle that passes through it stitch by stitch. Everything is within reach of the artist’s hands. In these textiles, the great feat is the minimal gesture of cutting a fabric on the bias and creating a ruffle; giving volume to a plane from the simplest movement. Small manifestos or celebrations of the artist’s preference for what is elemental, not for being simple, but for being accessible.

In Pintura despierta, the second textile piece, there is also a clear choice of volume as a resource. The undulations of the checkered fabric generate new compositions while raising questions about the boundaries between the frame and the painting, and about the relationship between the two – who is holding whom? In the center, a rectangle of eggplant velvet houses another smaller quadrant painted in pink oil paint. The piece could be read as a rascuacho. In the first sense, rascuacho or rascuache is a colloquial adjective that is used to describe something or someone of poor quality or little value. In a second meaning, the term refers to traditional figurative paintings in the border areas between Mexico and the United States, which are characterized by the choice of the sumptuous qualities of oil on velvet. Coincidentally, it is also the technique used by the artist in her very first experiences with painting. The origin here is identified as what is nearby. The return to the practices from the beginning are a choice, almost decisive, because of how close they are; by the velvet near the lap. At the same time, the memory of the beginning brings questions to the present: why does one end up doing what one does?

In the second room the protagonists are two bodies converted into paintings or, perhaps, two paintings converted into bodies that gravitate suspended from the ceiling. As is common in Scafati’s work, boundaries are blurred and transitions are lost. Tied with the shibari technique, the body-paintings move on the border between pain and pleasure.

As a final point, the last room takes us to a torso composed of a cascade of inverted frames sheltered by a pink knitted sweater. On the back of each painting, Scafati paints, in different shades of soft, bright pink, monochrome rectangles. The piece refers to another beginning, in this case to the year 2015, when the artist presented Las Cosas Amantes in Buenos Aires. Coincidentally and in a final twist, the two colors that gave life to the show from that time were the same ones that cross the floors of the Barragán House, which today houses Painting, painting, painting.