“Lemonade, Bitte” is the title Sergio Femar gives to his exhibition at the Victor Lope Gallery in Barcelona. Knowing Sergio, I can allow myself to interpret that the original title is the assumption of an inexcusable existentialism in these times; more, if possible, for a 31-year-old artist.  To Sergio, the strange 2020 gave him the opportunity to live a productive artistic residency in Berlin and here is the lemonade… But it is also his creative condition: from reality to his artistic essence, passing through painting. More lemonade, please.

This painting may be based on informalism, that art form so universally theorized and acclaimed in different periods and so reviled in others for its indeterminacy. It can generate self-referential samples, undoubtedly valid, but always begging for an explanation, looking for its determination.

However, in this exhibition, Femar’s work finds a well-structured organization by means of some organizing principles anchored in his lived experience and shaped in recent years. We can already see the laws that order his work away from informalism. Syntax already permeates. There has always been an order in his pieces, but among a varied complexity that in this exhibition is notably reduced, giving way to more evident forms of order.

The principle of selection of this artist is made from color. From this vertebral element, the pieces extend over the surfaces in compositions above all, like those made in some moments of abstract expressionism. In this exhibition we celebrate the appearance of large areas of pure color in compositions of fluid contours that include the curve to give greater dynamism. These zones are combined with subtle chromatic transitions.

Powerful chromatic zones force the artist to expand his formats. And it is to be expected that his work will continue along these lines because we can already perceive here a healthy creation of atmospheres that envelop the spectator. We approach an environmental painting, immersed within the four walls of the gallery, which incorporates a spatial experience to the force of color. The result within these walls is surprisingly energetic, because that is what color is in Sergio Femar: an energetic state rather than a concrete manifestation. The end of “easel” painting for an artist who is clearly moving towards a spatialism that demands the third dimension.

Lemonade, because the poetics and the practice of this opening in the work of Sergio Femar are given by the development of art under the current conditions of production. An economic system that devours materials, crushes objects and condemns all existing forms to early obsolescence, forcing a reconsideration of the relationship between art and matter, between form and technique. Thus, without messages, without concepts already hackneyed in the media: as the artistic practice of those who try to make their way among less and less operative truisms. In contrast to the idealism of his previous informalism, Sergio Femar evolves towards an evident commitment of art with its environment. See the choice of materials and their re-integration in art.

Painting, sculpture, installation… let’s say that Lemonade, Bitte points retrospectively towards a very current structurism in his exploration of the visual and tactical organization of color, form and space, in coherence with the diverse provenance of the materials used. Sergio Femar’s abstraction confers to his works a value of reality: what is there is what is seen.

Paco de Blas