What color is a tango? Is it a pulsing red or endless blue? Maybe it is captured in a texture of clothing or skin, a flash of movement or a veiled glance. In the paintings of Pacia Sallomi, it is expressed in all of these things, as displayed in her exhibition “Tango Colores” at Latino Arts.
Sallomi describes the dynamics of dancing tango: “It is a dance of invention, of listening to each other, of feeling the other’s desire and responding; thus both partners are simultaneously active and receptive. There is an interdependence in this dance that cannot be achieved if each partner is not also fully in their own center.”
The 36 paintings on view explore this communicative power and sensual relationships through a number of facets. Many pieces are vignettes of couples on and off the dance floor, silhouetted in still embraces or in the rush of the dance. Figures in smaller studies reappear in larger finished works, while others are captured as sketches in pale pastel colors, like ghosts of a dance that has moved so quickly it leaves nothing except the memory of movement.
The centerpiece of the exhibition is Queremos Bailar, a monumental painting that draws us into a cavernous hall with a gleaming wood floor and deep crimson walls, constructed through flurried chevrons of brushstrokes. Two musicians playing accordions in the corners of the foreground draw us in, and in the distance, couples are paired off. A shadowed man stands waiting while a woman glowing in white, wearing a Panama-style hat and a swinging dress slipping from one shoulder, moves across the floor toward him. A lightly indicated line on the floor makes the object of her intentions unmistakable.
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The subject of tango makes for a fascinating starting point, and Sallomi also takes seriously the notion of invention in her painting. Expressive, gestural brushstrokes, flat areas of abstract form, translucent figures and even light notes of surrealist juxtapositions combine in variations. The colors of tango vary, but whether delicate or powerful, there is a consistent intensity like the dance itself.
“Tango Colores” is on view through February at Latino Arts, 1028 S. Ninth St.
