Muscles of the Clouds

“I have just woken up and the sun is slipping over the horizon. I return to my notes. From here, up on high, I can see more clearly what Leonard Cohen meant when he said something like “draw the muscles of the clouds.” I discover that you see better from up here, this evening, and I think that many clouds, many moments, pass by and are transformed, they just happen. I invent them in my memory and they seem pink to me, the pink of the muscles of the clouds.
From here above, in the nightfall that is taking me back to autumn, I am struck by an odd thought that I should mention to Juan. It has to do with the pink colour that has suddenly appeared, and with force, in his canvases and works on paper. Thinking of this colour satisfies my demands, though it is at once soothing and uncertain. The pink of the muscles of the clouds is the pink of the satin petticoats in Fragonard’s picture, the pink of Matisse’s Luxe, Calme et Volupté and the bubblegum pink of Willem de Kooning’s paintings, of his Women and his landscapes; it is also the pink used by Philip Guston, the same pink with which Fontana made something that still reminds me of a surfboard…”

Fragment of the text by Ricardo Forriols “Olivares Song” for the catalog of the solo exhibition at the Pilara Parra Gallery 2005.