The works of Mario Toral are, without a doubt, related to us perhaps more to an innermost part of us; his paintings put us somewhere we cannot place, but one which is tremendously familiar.
Mario Toral points to the ground; the here and now on this earth; the atmosphere, the lapses of light; of faces tumbling down a cliff … on to something like a mass of land, to a precise American silence that pleads a promise.
His works point toward a part we cannot fully remember, but which we know floats there on all sides.
Just to think that when we in the Toral Foundation wield a large amount of options, we quickly realize that the works of Mario Toral do not relate to something tangible - less still to books on architecture; quite the contrary, the works need a territory; one we can cross.
Mario's paintings for us Chileans are very special because they are works of art that we have been very familiar with, even before we attended workshops; they came before books, publications or Internet sites that led us toward a design.
We believe that the location of the foundation is not the perfect art classroom; we believe, after conversations with Mario in his home, that the foundation should house a promise that is the door to something more radical in the city.
The foundation should give us something more; we believe that his works should be housed in a boundless space: for the body, for art, for encounters, somewhere we can stay so as to open ourselves up and feel things we thought we had forgotten.
Only in an abyss can we re-encounter what we have forgotten.
CAN BE
only
the Abyss
raging
whitened
stalled
beneath the desperately
sloping incline
“A Throw of the Dice” Stephane Mallarme
