PAPERS AND FABRICS: TRADITIONAL MATERIALS FOR A NEW CONTEMPORARY LANGUAGE
Sep 26, 2018
art madrid
A new generation of artists returns to work with materials to check their expressive potential. With less interventionist proposals, there is a return to exploration, to the search for the aesthetic and creative possibilities of the raw material. As a result, there are works with a significant visual load that convey very diverse themes. The discourse acquires another depth, more material and plastic, condensed in the use of fabrics and layers of paper. We bring you three authors who conceive creation as an intimately manual process, who work with materials in a physical and contact way to build their own language away from the traditional discipline.
The work of Victoria Santesmases is very representative of the double life that materials may have. Her latest project develops around pain, its presence and its plastic representation in an abstract and essentialist way. In these cases, a simple stroke of colour, the contrasts of textures and the folds or grooves marked on the paper refer to the representation of the wound, as a tangible element that conveys the sensation of pain, be it physical or emotional. With this subtle work that declines any excess to focus only on the detail, the bare material retains a communicative potential of great impact, where words are superfluous and where the interpretation of the spectator completes the piece to provide its own personal and intimate meaning. Santesmases synthesises in her pieces, where the colour is hardly visible, deep emotions with a simple, clean and plastic proposal that perforates the papers and the layers, opens, bends and tears them in an attempt to transmit the impression that the deep feelings leave, there where no one enters.
Fernando Daza is another artist focused on work on paper to recreate patterns and motifs that refer us to the oriental aesthetic, with a right balance between colour and shape. With his technique, pieces acquire a volume that comes out of the plane, a three-dimensional aspect composed of slashed cut-offs that live together creating waves and modulations. The game of light and shadow, the cleanliness of the contours, the neatness of the compositions, make the work of Daza an exquisite aesthetic proposal. But beyond the simple geometry and the structures of his artwork, this artist conveys a deep feeling of peace and stillness that feeds from the Zen-Shui philosophy and projects towards the viewer. Also, the superposition of layers and subtle changes of colour remind us of natural elements of the landscape, the flow of water, the petals of flowers, or the plumage of birds.
In the use of materials in a more manual way the career of Pierre Louis Geldenhuys highlights. This artist makes of fabrics his centre of work, creating geometric patterns that gain depth when displayed on light boxes. The backlighting of these compositions enhances the colour of the silks, defines the shadow spaces, the lines of the drawing and the textures of the material. The work of Geldenhuys has much in common with Origami. With a delicate design work, the fabrics surrender to the artist's master hand, which distributes folds to generate new shapes without the need for threads or seams. In the same way, this ancient oriental technique constructs figures from paper, creates volumes, contours with a work very similar to that of this artist. His monochrome pieces transmit a smooth balance and serenity, with patterns that, from the geometry, remind us of the plants in bloom, the bristling surface of the sea, the swirls of wind and the edges of the precious stones.
