Until the second half of the 20 th century, to the action of elaborating a painting there was nothing more attributed than the obvious instrumental condition enabling to achieve the desired result: the pictorial picture. Though, since in the early 50th first Jackson Pollock and shortly later Georges Mathieu, the members of the European group COBRA or the ones of the Japonese Gutai, among others, began to give relevance to the prolonged act of the execution, the bases of what later would define itself as art of the process were formed, a new artistic concept where the production became more important than the result, and even turned into the only object, relegating the resulting forms - in the event of materialising - to just remains. The real time becomes a substantial element of the artistic action.

  Well, now it seams obligatory to ask yourself why of all things the starting point of this attitude which lead to the artistical practice towards the dematerialisation was the painting. Without doubt, one of the answers is to find in what Jackson Pollock offered as an answer to a question of William Wright in 1958, during a controversy provoked that time by his method of working, or better painting with the canvas extended on the floor and a stick instead of a brush which was kept at a few centimetres distance to the linen.

The North-American painter is sharp: "In my opinion, he says, the new needs need new techniques." And which were these needs?: the direct transposition of the author's state of mind onto the pictorial support, like Pollock himself confirms in this interview: "What I'm interested in is that today the painters do not have to look for a subject outside of themselves anymore. The modern painters.... work from their inside. " (Taken from Kristine Stiles & Peter Selz, Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art. A sourcebook of artists' writings, University of California Press, 1996, pages 22-24) This affirmation of subjectivism of course wasn't new; quite the contrary, it had a deep anchorage in the romanticism; but it actually was the form of tackling, through the automatism, the vigorous confrontation with the support and the rapidity of execution. The mentioned requirements immersed their main figures in the field of action.

The new strategies to render that literal connection between subject and work possible, ended discovering the potentialities of the action itself, turning into the central object of it: painting, in the pretext of corporal activity. Immediately, the configuration of the action or performance into a special artistic medium, substituted the manipulation of painting by other materials, although it's sure that intermittently these materials have continued participating in many performances up till now, ranging from Body Tracks of Ana Mendieta (1974) to Tetsuo bound to fail of Sergio Prego (1997), appearing in on of the scenes of Accions de La Fura dels Baus (1983).

The painting was used for so much, involuntarily, the birth of the performance and the evolving art. The generations of painters following the generation living after the Second World War, which stimulated these directions, ceased to feel the necessity of expanding themselves by the physical activity of painting and that's why they decreased or directly eliminated it of their creative interests, and returned to focus on the resulting product, which means on the pictorial picture. The evolving art and the performance developed regardless of the art, setting up the plot only in determined cases like the mentioned ones. The pictorial option of Oskar Ranz represents the newly awaken interest in the process of execution of the painting, which is not paying the smallest attention to the result achieved. In his work there are meeting two ways: firstly, the evolving and the pictorial, strictly speaking. The second is the one the artist offers to the spectator, while the first form leaves the intimacy of his studio, Oskar Ranz realises a painting of intense literary accents - he's often inspired by poetry - and persistent rhetorical forms.

Like I already showed in other moments, his painting makes the attention to the autonomous expression of the medium compatible with the metaphoric character, as already seen in his series Gota, Segundo de agua, desemboca ("drop, water second, estuary") 1996 - 1998, forming the beginning of the development of a concept of painting which extended to the following series and arrived in our days, a concept articulating from the idea of nearly obsessive systematic accumulation of the layers of paint. Firstly, the drops were putting forward the rhythm and direction of the paint, like rain coming before the plastic thickness it was preceding, later, the elaborated surface was subordinated under a violent washing whose traces remained as a witness of that repeated event: Naufragio con espectador ("ruin with spectator") 1999 - 2000; after this the washing turned into a starting mechanism, a kind of peculiar decollage (Despieces, en la insensatez de Corazon [comments, in the foolishness of heart], 2001 - 2002) and finally, in the latest series (Vestir una piel nueva, cubrir la sangre vieja, [Put on a new skin, cover the old blood] 2003 - 2004), the decollage extends to the collage, as it is already combining the following previously treated and brought up fragments of an other surface, on the canvas. That is why the working process is so essential, process in the sense of temporal action during which the author's physical activity gets significance or, to say it another way, where the dilation of the execution of every work gives room to an exercise justifying itself, being considered like that by the artist. And this consciousness of the importance of the process in real time is it, which gives it an own condition overcoming the mere instrumental character.

Though, Oskar Renz reserves this part of the creative action for himself, permitting us to experience it only with the help of the traces fixed on the canvas, the accumulation of the layers of paint as well as the bases and collages, in short, the frozen presence of the previous actions on the surface, are more than obvious signs of these prolongations and I almost dare to call it rough processes of preparation of the plastic picture. This attitude indicates that although the relevance is awarded to the process, the final result begins to assert itself. This way the artist recuperates, like so many other painters of the last decades, the pictorial praxis by exploring the capacities of expression of this medium, in his case from the starting point of a definition of the canvas' surface where spontaneity and control come to a balance. The process is that's why a modulated action, something that also remains absolutely written on the canvas.

The holding back of this creative process was finally revealed in March 2004 with the staging of a performance the artist called Bitter. The exposition hall of the Escuela de Arte in León, where it took place, was prepared at its two long walls with a freely geometrical weft of adhesive paper lines. The background of the scene, occupied by the group Los Derocktados, and in front of them an accumulation of bottles and cans of the beverage giving title to the action. The artist and Carlos de la Varga, who accompanied the artist in the development, were wearing deep red jackets, clearly reminding of a waiter's uniform since Oskar Ranz decided to substitute the pictorial material with the well known drink. He did it - obviously ironically and to match with the manipulated material - by substituting the painter's clothes with the waiter's ones. The goal of this was, of course, the accelerated making-up of a painting in front of the spectators. This way, the studio lost its intimacy by moving to a public room which turned into a stage.

Following the rhythm given by Los Derocktados the main characters began to move, overturning loudly over the bottles and cans of bitter, opening them as fast as possible and pouring out the contents on both walls. Now, of course, before going on, it is necessary to ask oneself about the sense of this action and especially about the given value to each one of its components: process and final image. Did the artist attribute the same peer role to them which he did in his usual works in the studio? Clearly not. And this has nothing to do with the ephemeral condition of the resulting product, and not even with its accelerated execution, but with the concept of this performance as a representation, - strictly said, as in a certain way this condition is consubstantial to the mentioned practice - not only with his usual working process, but with his own pictorial path. Let's see. Indeed, during the about twenty minutes in which the authors are continuing, there are realised different working methods which are to symbolise the painting methods used by Oskar Ranz between 1996 and 2004. This way, the series Gota was clarified through the expulsion of the atomized liquid, Naufragio con espectador, where the drops turned into a flood, had its presence through the violent and massive overflow of the liquid, directly from the bottle or can, while Despieces was remembered by the outburst of the weft of paper which was recovering both of the walls.

This way the different ways of tackling the pictorial image remained synthesized, in this case the capital of the artist, as these are not only instrumental strategies serving for a previsualized image, but in some way, the picture is the consequence of the election of the process and at the same time of the importance attached to the process of execution. Bitter therefore had the aim of a synthesis of a creative path and at the same time it revealed the interest of the artist in the process of execution, showing it for the first time, though outside, like mentioned above, as a representation. Oskar Ranz assumes legitimately the idea which the abstract expressionists and informalists initiated, namely: the pictorial execution as performance. The author himself approves it when pointing out that "the canvas is a place, where it isn't possible to reproduce or to express, but only to act". Actually, there could be carried out a report about his performances in the studio, in a way similar to how Hans Namuth did with Jackson Pollock. To act for himself, offering us only the material result of this staging is the usual behaviour of Oskar Ranz. In an exceptional way, in Bitter the action proceeded the result and of course, the intimate was made public. And I'm returning to the beginning. The artist recuperates the value of the pictorial activity because his executing strategy is not conventional, as it weren't the strategies of Pollock, Mathieu and Motonama. Though, if in the attitudes of the mentioned there was to be stated a certain emotional instability, to a large extent result of the historical circumstances, with Oskar Ranz it is mainly the discovery of an effective method to construct a plastic image; an image that always is the echo of one's own me and that's why always works, like Pollock noticed, from inside. That is why the process of painting turns out to be so efficient for Oskar Ranz. Though, facing the dominant austerity characterising the processes of these painters, his methods are more complex and changing, in short it is a gifted process, like his painting, of notable rhetoric intensity.