Algo o alguien
Orlando Ruffinengo
12/06/2026-07/08/2026
Quizás el tono que más le hace justicia a la pintura de Ruffinengo es el de la pregunta. La pregunta por develar el misterio de lo que está viendo y sintiendo. La poesía de la luz que llega a los objetos no ofrece respuestas contundentes, y ese sentimiento es el que guía la búsqueda del pintor durante cinco décadas. Parece que una nostalgia invencible lo acompaña y pinta cuando sus emociones son hondas. De aquel camino nunca sabe si saldrá hacia la mágica ternura o si el drama cósmico terminará imponiéndose. Cuando logra ubicarse justo en el medio, llega a la síntesis perfecta, consigue la cromaticidad justa que lo anima desde adentro. Cuando no pinta, el tiempo es sólo la espera hasta llegar nuevamente a un estado poético confidencial.
Su aventura con la pintura comenzó de manera autodidacta cuando tenía 36 años. Guiado por la intuición, observa los rincones de su casa como si ésta fuera el mundo, sus muebles y objetos le sirven de modelo para contar una historia que todavía no sabe bien cuál es, pero le gusta. Para respirar un poco, fabrica ventanas donde imagina paisajes de ensueño con la elegancia lánguida de cipreses, montañas para curvar la llanura y deja la horizontalidad para las nubes. Sabe que no debe demorarse en la condición soñada del paisaje, debe tener los pies en la tierra y de vez en cuando sale a buscar por las esquinas de Gálvez la dulce geometría que lo tranquiliza. Busca recovas como motivo para pintar arcos, y paredones y calles con las cuales ensayar los finos matices del color y la serenidad de las sombras. Son los años sesenta y escucha que le dicen naif, primitivo e ingenuo, pero como todo lo está conociendo, no le preocupa. Mientras se interioriza en ello, ocurre algo que lo paraliza. Los bellos días terminan cuando la muerte lo toca de cerca. Una incierta vigilia se apodera de su mente. Desde allí inicia un largo camino por entender ahora otra cosa. Todo lo que antes veía con la lupa de lo maravilloso, ahora lo ve con los ojos del fatalismo. El duelo, la soledad y el silencio —terrible silencio—, se vuelven la materia con la que se enfrenta el pintor para develar el oscuro misterio que no comprende. La década del setenta lo tomará por completo bajo estos pensamientos y en una entrevista dirá: “Soy pesimista, desde un interior, sentado en una silla, veo transcurrir mi vida sin otra perspectiva que la muerte”. Comienza a sentir más fuerte el llamado de la pintura metafísica, que quizás en él sea la voluntad para perseguir por medio del arte el enigma que anima el universo. Acechado por lo divino se convierte en el pintor de la penumbra y desde allí, poco a poco, atraviesa las distintas horas del día y el ritmo que más logra comprender es el del crepúsculo. En la resolana de misterio de aquel momento encontrará el camino de la redención, desde donde irá levantando cuadro por cuadro la saturación de sus cielos, subido a una meditada fantasía que lo trae de regreso a la ternura. En los años noventa llegan recuerdos que vienen de lejos. Las incógnitas del suburbio ahora son habitadas por acróbatas, los primeros personajes habilitados a vivir en su paisaje. Ha dedicado tanto tiempo a la angustia que ahora, para que la pintura no se vuelva rutina, busca desatar lo mágico. Ya no puede atravesar el plano de la misma manera que lo hacía antes. Despunta el vicio de contornos nítidos, pero no fríos, en pisos cuadriculados. Cielos atrevidos, verdes y auriazules convierten a la metafísica en un juego divertido. Quiere pintarlo todo y para eso hay que olvidarse de todo.
Cristian Osuna
Someone or something
Orlando Ruffinengo
06/12/2026-08/07/2026
Perhaps the register that best suits Ruffinengo’s painting is that of the question. The question that seeks to unravel the mysteries of what one sees and feels. Answers might be found in the poetry of light striking objects but none are straightforward and it is that sensation that guided the painter for five decades. It is as though he were forever shrouded in an indomitable nostalgia and only moved to paint when his emotions were at their most profound. His was a path whose destination was always uncertain; he never knew whether it would lead to a magical tenderness or whether the cosmic drama would end up asserting itself. It was when it led him right between the two that achieved a perfect synthesis, the chromatic palette that appropriately reflected his inner motivations. When he wasn’t painting, he passed the time waiting for the necessary intimate poetic state to come over him once more.
Ruffinengo’s adventure with painting began when he set out with no formal training at the age of 36. Guided by intuition, he observed the spaces of his home as though they were the world itself; his furniture and objects served as models with which to tell a story he hadn’t quite plotted out but that he knew he liked. To give himself a little breathing room, he made windows through which he imagined dreamscapes featuring the languid elegance of cypresses and mountains bringing their curves to the plains, soaring from horizontality up into the clouds. He knew that he mustn’t linger on the dream aspects of the landscape, that he had to keep his feet on the ground and occasionally went out to search the corners of Gálvez for the geometry that so reassured and satisfied him. He sought out market galleries for their arches, walls and streets in order to experiment with subtle variations of color and revel in the serenity of shadows. These were the sixties and he heard people calling his work naif, primitive and ingenuous but because he was only learning, he didn’t mind. As he delved further, he encountered something that paralyzed him. The good times ended when death struck close to home and his mind was overcome with uncertainty. This marked the beginning of a long journey of philosophical enquiry. Everything that he had once seen through a lens of wonder was now regarded with fatalism. Grief, loneliness and silence – a terrible silence – became the materials with which the painter addressed a dark mystery he could not understand. The seventies would arrive with him immersed in these moods and in an interview he would say: ‘I am a pessimist, from an interior, sitting in a chair, the only perspective from which I view my life is that of mortality.’ He began to feel the call of metaphysical painting more strongly, it seemed to lend him the will to examine the enigmas of the universe through art. Haunted by the divine, he became a painter of the shadows and from there, little by little, he moved on to different times of day. The rhythm that he best came to understand was that of dusk. In the mysterious glare of these hours he found the path to redemption and began to produce painting after painting of saturated skies along with considered fantasies that brought him back to wonder. In the nineties, memories of a remote past began to arrive. The mysterious suburbs were inhabited by acrobats, the only characters fit to live in his landscapes. He had spent so much time in anguish that now, to prevent the paintings from becoming routine, he looked to unleash the magic. He no longer travelled through the plane in the same way as he had done before. He unstitched his obsession with clean, but not cold, outlines, on checkered floors. Bold green, gold and blue skies turned metaphysics into an amusing game. He wanted to paint everything and to do that he needed to forget everything.
Cristian Osuna
