curatorial text
Laeticia Mello
“Dos contrastes”
“Dos contrastes” revolves around an artistic production different from the one we are used to witnessing from both Matilde Marín and Carolina Antoniadis. These artists demonstrate their daring by exploring different disciplines in a constant search of different materiality.
The meticulousness and attention to detail that both artists pay, is reflected in small-format pieces that give shape to large installations.
The proposal presented by the gallery stands out for the detailed curatorial setting up, in which the lighting and location of the works have been specially taken care of, favoring the opposition and complement between both artistic productions.
The works of Marín and Antoniadis are contrasted in color, material and luminosity. Beauty is intertwined in a rhythmic and organic way in both nomadic artists in terms of languages and poetics.
Upon entering the space, one is surprised by the monumental installation Manto de La Utopía by Marin. The work, in a wall format made up of a fabric where multiple hand-made small papers using oriental techniques are placed and later engraved, burned or perforated, was located and installed directly in the gallery space, adjusting the specific format of the wall where it is exhibited.
Marín’s series called “Muros”, developed since 1997 as a non-traditional graphic work, and represents -like her vast body of work- the role of the artist as a witness in the history of various events. The walls, silent, ancient or fleeting, have the memories and cultures of the people engraved and printed. “The idea of working with walls is linked to the need to distance the engraving of statism from its usual supports; to turn it into an object installed in a real space that includes and envelops the viewer” in Marín’s word. Manto de La Utopía is accompanied by the video Travesía (4’55 ’’, 2002), where the metaphor of the face of a young woman becomes an adult through the paths of her choice. The piece addresses the concept of emigration and nomadism that compel humans to find themselves in a transit condition. Several itineraries that will involve a journey of traces and myths over time.
In the small room, Antoniadis greets the visitors with two wall installations in ceramic and gold. She is interested in the limits and ambiguity between art and design, and incorporates objects and paintings that function as autonomous elements and with a complementary narrative.
Ceibo suites is an exquisite evocation of memories, fears and awe that shows the undulating morphology of the national flower. In the artist’s words “crowns for me have various possible readings, as decoration in funeral situations or as crowning in the materialization of a triumph. I am not trying to provide a closed meaning to my work, the choice of kapok flowers is simply because they always attracted me morphologically due to their complexity. ”
In opposition to the Ceibo series, there is the installation entitled Family constellation, a series of microstories where the iconology of the daily life of the paintings is surrounded by miniatures of children’s faces intervened with gold. Unlike the aesthetics of Antoniadis’ renowned and prominent neo-baroque paintings, her ceramic objects present a more syncretic language about the icon and configuration of the feminine.
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