Painting is an enigma of the visible, its real contents go beyond what our retina registers. To aprehend it we must not only "see" but visualize, it, that is, to capture with our sensibility the subjectivity of the thing we see. We have an "evident" proof of this in the drawings of Regina da Costa Val.
The distinction between "to see" and "to visualize" occupies and preoccupies the mind of the theorists of art, who write thick volumes on the subject. This continuous effort is justified by the fact that a work of art does not constitute an object whose identification/ends at first sight, since it is an object of aesthetic expressivity that appeals to our sensibility, which varies from a spectator to another, or from a theorist to another.
A discursive transposition of a work of art is, above all, a task of artistic order, which is not always achleved by a theoretical speculation. Therefore, the deciphering of the enigma is not to be found necessarily in the erudition of the authors of treatises, but in the artistic intuition of the poets.
In that way it is once more confirmed the saying: Similia similibus curantur. Paraphrasing: art explains itself by art.
The great poet from Minas Gerais, Henriqueta Lisboa, a master of the poetic language, mentioned the problem of the "visible" in a work of art. In her book, "The Abode of the Being", there is a poem on the subject that reads: I recreat the visible as I like/With particular hues/I Invent the visible according to my own eyes/So that through the confrontation/Other eyes may see the new prisms". Here there is, in a few lines, an entire treatise about the problem. The "Abode of the Being", for Henriqueta Lisbon, is poetry, for Regina da Costa Val is painting, and both complete themseives in the task of creating "new prisms so that other may see them". "Invent the visible", that is, to create something original is the essence of the artistic production, which Regina does admirably well. Her paintings and drawings are done with the "particular nues", mentioned by Henriqueta Lisboa, hues that are of a high aesthetic expressivity. The drawings are characterized by morphologic peculiarities, rhythmic deformed forms of great emotional intensity, in accordance with the neo-expressionist form, involving the interioity of the human being, where Regina occupies a prominent place. Her paintings objectivate a subjectivity in a perceptible form by means of a singular plasticity. This singularity does not follow the traditional (and superficial) patterns of what is conventionally accepted as "beautiful". A beautiful work may have, eventually, an artistic value, but a work of art does not necessarily need to be beautiful to be classified as such. Neo-expressionist painting does not care about traditional beauty, as it exhausts itself at a first sight and becomes tedious if looked at frequently. Contrarily, the more a work of art is observed, the more its hidden beauty reveals itself to us. A neo-expressionist work is not fit to be a simple wall ornament: It has a deeper meaning, it contains a sulbime resonance, it maintains a silent and constant dialogue with the observer and effaces the solitude that surrounds the familiar circle. Regina's works fulfill entirely these conditions. As everyone knows, agood painter is always a good drawer; but the contrary is not true. Regina confirms the rule. She is a master in both forms of the plastic arts. Her drawings follow the exigencies of the most acclaimed masters of the art although she hadno knowledge of their rules. "The center of the gravity of a painting", says Paul Klee, "rests in the representation, through a simple and beautiful plasticity, of a content of multidimensional simultaneity". "Uber due moderne Kunst", apud Albert Hofstadter, p.94. This is exactly what characterizes the work of Regina: structural simplicity and beauty in profundity.
In her work she tries to search plastically for the deep feelings of the human being, which she achieves thanks to the magic wand of her artistic talent. Thus, in her drawings, she does not simply follow a line. She traces the line, imprinting a personal touch to the course of it. The difference between a line that is traced and a line that is followed is that the former follows the impulses of a creative intuition, while in the latter the hand of the artist goes along a line previously projected. This one might even be more perfect, but it lacks the emotional burden of a singular imperfection that every work of art has, if it is to be considered as such. The intention is to give to the image created by intuition an aesthetic expression plastically articulated, joining technique to creative intuition. She succeeds in conciliating admirably the problems of form and color with the meaning of the drawings. To color a drawing correctly is no easy task. Thus, the coloring of a picture finds its equilibrium in the logic of the architectonic structure of the painting. But in the drawings color must follow the movement of the line, which is the primary substance in artistic production. The chromatic gradation and the line movement in the drawings of Regina acquire a perfect equilibrium. She makes the white combine with the chromatic structure, a pictorial essentiality seldom achieved. "What makes a composition a work of art?", asks professor Albert Hofstadter, and he answers: interior truth. That is the precise definition of Regina’s work: she is veridical. For this reason, her contribution to the modern Brazilian art is of the greatest cultural significance, entitling her, therefore, to occupy the center of the national podium of art.

 

ISAÍAS GOLGHER
Critical of Art and Historian