Series 9:
Breakaway or Emotional feminine liberation.
1992-1995
Once again, I refer to the text with which I presented
the exhibition of this series at the Sala Rekalde gallery. I went off
to live in New York when the exhibition closed in November 1995. I added a number of quotes chosen because I identifi ed with their
authors, as I make clear in the following exhibition presentation.
In reviewing these images in writing (and in really
living through them, to expel them from the body),
woman can liberate herself from them and arrive
at an independent conception of herself, of her
culture and her society.”
Sigrid Weigel
MEANING, PROCESS AND TECHNOLOGY
MEANING
Meaning, the real reason behind my interest in
painting and my dedication to it, lies in its functionality, i.e.“for what I get out of it.”
Using painting as a tool for discovering reality is a
discipline equivalent to others used to the same end. Science,
or philosophy, for instance.
In painting, exploration is done through images.
These have changed over history, depending on the interiorexterior
needs of each age.
Anyone exploring in plastic art performs an equivalence,
a representation, between the needs and the images.
Over the long history of painting, in much of
it, the images (the themes) hid its true problems. And its
achievements.
All 20th century painting is an attempt to eliminate
the distance between “what is represented” (themes) and the
purely plastic concepts.
Basically, what Piet Mondrian left us were nudes
before the mirror: he left the pure, basic plastic elements
and the plane surface ahead marked out.
From my point of view, with Mondrian painting
starts from zero. It was born again because he did it through
and for CONSCIOUS attitudes and objectives.
The equivalence between the image and the
problem to be explored became transparent.
PROCESS
And from this precise point of plastic evolution, an
explanation of my own work processes becomes viable.
By process of work I understand its EVOLUTION. In
other words, what passes on from one artwork to another, or
from one period to another of the oeuvre.
In the mid-80s, after a phase spent working within
the concepts of Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism and
Conceptualism, my next artistic challenge was to:
• Overcome the bi-dimensional limits of the support,
with the pure plastic elements coherent to the plane.
Meaning that, while assimilating and using
only pure plastic elements (Mondrian), I had to achieve
MULTIDIMENSIONAL IMAGES IN A MULTI-DIMENSIONAL
SPACE.
A highly complex exploration requiring a nigh-on
15-year process, in the course of which I found myself obliged
to analyze, experiment and assimilate new plastic concepts,
such as:
• Definition of the concept of LIMIT, depending on
its function.
• Definition of the concept of SYNTHETIC
PROPORTION.
• Definition of the concept of PLASTIC DIVISION.
• Definition of the concept of DOUBLE
ORTHOGONALITY.
• Defi nition of the concept of MULTIDIMENSIONALITY.
Using these concepts, I have gradually put together
my “THEORY OF PLASTIC ENERGY”, a compendium of the
doctoral thesis.
As I want it to be understood, in the exhibition and
in this catalogue, my work PROCESS is INTERIOR (mental,
psychological, emotional), searched for, felt, understood and
assimilated through computer-generated PLASTIC IMAGES. A process similar to a scientifi c or philosophical one: one image
leads me to another; the solution of one problem brings me up
against a fresh one. But all of them together, the whole thing,
have helped me to construct a more lucid, more exact IMAGE
OF REALITY.
The art works presented in this exhibition and
catalogue are from the series “Breakaway”, the title I gave
the process when I began my exploration in July 1994. It is also
known as “Feminine emotional liberation”, a title I gave it
near the end of the process in August 1995.
The entire exploration in that period IN TURN belongs
to and is a study and analysis of the last two concepts developed
in the doctoral thesis:
• Definition of the concept of DOUBLE ORTHOGONALITY.
• Definition of the concept of MULTI-DIMENSIONALITY.
TECHNOLOGY
I chose the computer as a technical tool out of
necessity, a necessity arising from my studies of the concept of “Limit”, of permanent and thorough-going MEASUREMENT,
both of the surface of each plane involved in the composition of
the image, and of its SITUATION (its placing in the bi-dimensional
plane of the support), and of the SATURATION of each color:
ALL THIS WAS VITAL TO DIMENSIONAL
TRANSCENDENCE
The computer’s effi ciency in the constant and
interactive manipulation of these plastic elements was also
essential.
Move to New York. Expression from Unification. Dots.
I had a new work proposal in my head, and that
was “to atomize the planes” I had used to produce all my
previous work. But I needed time to adapt to a new country,
to a different culture and the sheer urgency of New York City.
As usual when I want to start something, I drew plenty and
gradually did some painting. I made a series of paintings of
crisscrossing verticals and horizontals, which for me represented
the vertigo I felt the fi rst year I lived here. In parallel, and with
the last computer-generated image from Bilbao still vivid in my
mind (imagen 8color.pcx catálogo Rekalde) I started on the
series Belonging, Difference and Pure Energy as soon as I was
set up in my Brooklyn studio.
But I also wanted to “paint” myself, with my own
hand, those dots of pure yellows, reds and blues, constructing
images that fl owed from an attitude utterly bereft of all
intent, images that you might say were executed through the
unfolding of meditation.
Series 9 Gallery
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