The act of choosing a material to produce an object is expressive in itself. Watercolors have been present in Tuneu’s work since the 1970s.

This technique always challenges artists to test the limits imposed by the line, because of its characteristics. Tuneu’s method consists in overlaying thin washes of delicately mixed colors. A luminous transparent effect is obtained by overlaying chromatic layers. The whiteness of the paper is crucial in this case. It is essential for this series of works that the Arches paper have a specific thickness, texture and grammage, to create such an effect.

Watercolor began to be valued as an artistic medium in England in the early 19th century. Artists such as J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851) and John Constable (1776-1837), fleeing from an increasingly gloomy academic painting, used watercolors as a technical resource in their search for a certain effect of light. On the other hand, the introduction of chemical pigments brought about a profound transformation in the painter’s palette, which began to rely on artificial colors. The colors applied in painting became increasingly distant from the color present in natural objects – they began to act as signs, apart from the colors perceived in nature. More rigorous chromatic compositions led artists to find support in chromatic theories such as those by Goethe, Chevreul and Ostwald. Colors began to be seen in their physiological dimension, in the effects they produced internally in the observer’s eye. The optical experience became more abstract insofar as the painters, instead of looking at nature in the search for external stimuli, arbitrarily used the colors arranged on their palette in order to express an inner state. Rather than describing a physical behavior of light, the chromatic circle became a resource for exploring the physiological, psychic and spiritual dimensions of color. The studies of chromatic landscapes made by Goethe 150 years ago teach us to see abstract paintings with other eyes.

The fold also refers to the Japanese paper folding technique that influenced the Brazilian Neo-Concrete movement. How to think of Lygia Clark’s Bichos without considering origami? When, in the previous reliefs made by Tuneu, the folds were literal, now they appear as an idea, they only take place in our imagination. The chromatic cuts implied in the folds reveal a latent square that recalls Bauhaus or Josef Albers (1888-1976), an artist celebrated for his Homage to the Square and his book Interaction of Color. However, I believe that a concrete or aseptic interpretation does not effectively bring us closer to understanding Tuneu’s watercolors. Besides the fold, in this work there is always an empty internal space that refers to a Zen rock garden, something that effectively cannot be seen. As another master of color, Matisse (1869-1954), said: “colors exist and, nevertheless, they do not exist.”