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.
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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.
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His works point toward a part we cannot fully remember, but which we know floats there on all sides.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Only in an abyss can we re-encounter what we have forgotten.
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CAN BE
only
the Abyss
raging
whitened
stalled
beneath the desperately
sloping incline
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“A Throw of the Dice” Stephane Mallarme
