Today, Friday, ceramics is a protagonist. Victoria Galleries, of Coral Gables, opens a two-man show, Terra i Spazio, with the works of the master ceramacist Armando Martinez and the paintings of Randy Nutt.

Nutt presents a collection of pieces meticulously made by spraying paint on canvas. To create the dynamic effects of his paintings, Nutt favors cut shapes; their combinations establish images through his control of colors.

"Life is a continuous blending of forms and colors defined by the relationship between positive and negative space," explains the painter. "The dots made in this medium are so fine that you don't see the transitions among the colors."

The artist, from the interrelationships of basic forms, creates a spectrum of identities that gives a sense of great mobility to his works. This incessant movement of individual forms that combine with one another also is basic to his personal creative philosophy.

"Life has a shape all its own," affirms Nutt. "The elements that surround us each have their own personal characteristics, yet are part of the whole. This makes for an endless mosaic of individual and communal interactions. This is what my art is about: the pattern of life."

Nutt's works are characterized by density, built up by successive fragments and planes of color. For the painter, this is the equivalent of painting life itself.

Martinez, a well-recognized expert artisan in the raku technique, a Japanese form of ceramics, is perhaps one of the most natural practitioners of this art form in the present day. His work comes partly from his pure imagination and partly from his incredible manual dexterity. To this combination, one must also add a sense of the lyric. The ceramic sculptor confronts creativity as a supreme form of enjoyment of life.

"The works come to me naturally and the different components are self-justifying as each piece acquires its own identity, " says the Cuban master. "I may imagine something when I begin to mold and reform the clay, but, in the end, my first idea has been flooded out by the result itself. That surprise is what counts the most at the hour of creativity."

One of the most distinctive features of the pieces created by this sculptor is that they seem to have been uprooted from the past, from time immemorial. One can not avoid imagining that they were excavated from an archeological site, or even more likely, from beneath the depths of the ocean.

"I live two powerful realities: my family and my ceramics," declares Martinez. "For me, both are eternal. For that reason, what I do has a sense of being further away than time. That, finally, encompasses both imagination and reality."

The imagination of this sculptor is concerned with not only the objects of everyday life, but also the ideals of those objects. What can be stored in his boxes and vases? It must be the essences of things. His plates must be destined for rituals.

"What I am most interested in currently are those pieces that I am making that utilize mechanical elements," says the artist. "They are like a play on those practical things of life that have stopped being useful at a given moment in time. It is then that they acquire mystery, beauty and their own life."

That vision of life of the master ceramicist contrasts with that of the painter. Both are valid. Those who love art will end up being the winners from the co-occurrence of these two artistic visions.

The show, Terra i Spazio, Armando Martinez and Randy Nutt, will open today, at 7 pm at

Victoria Galleries, 254 Giralda Avenue, Coral Gables.

(translation by C. Horvitz)