Time and its objects
Nelson Macedo, 2019
“...all knowledge of the intimacy of things is immediately a poem.”
— Gaston Bachelard
— Gaston Bachelard
When jars, churches, corners of a bedroom, become toys; when cities become miniatures and appear as mounted pieces of a child’s game; when there’s an exaltation of the experience’s periphery; when the objects present themselves emancipated from the real world from which they belong to... then, they can welcome attributes other than those they naturally carry. This emancipation takes off from the objects its compromise which constitute the way we conceive them and, free of those conditionings, their fundament of reality can be expanded.
On this exhibition by Paula Siebra, the nature of meaning present in the paintings arises by the living reminescences that habitate the affective memory of the artist. The buildings, the houses, may fall down; the objects may disappear physically over time, but the experiences they provoked remain intact – those are present and alive in her intimacy and are actually the raw material of her creative process. The objects from the paintings do not exist, therefore, as mental reproductions, nor as conceptual objects, but as affective references from those which compose her personal imaginary.
Consistently, in this presented reality, everything appears as an embryo; everything is an evocation; nothing, at first, is given in a direct and objective way. The world seems to back off, it seems it wants to play hide-and-seek. A patina covers it all up with some sort of mist, distancing the major happening from the audience, leaving only traces of a time lost in our memory.
In contrast, the shapes of the areas that shelter the objects emerge cropped with clarity, with its limits visibly defined. As each object is presented on the interior of a shape and, itself, possesses its own identity, for the spectator there will be two different references, two plans of meaning superimposed on the visual field.
So it happens because in every representation we will find this internal division between the represented and the materially configured, as two independent meaning dimensions. Consequently, the overlaying of references appears as a objective possibility of the formal constitution of the image.
The visual field shows itself constituted by areas of color that arise exalted in the foreground and that ask the objects to recede on the compositions. Those objects will show themselves by fragments, exhibiting only the sufficient to be recognized; still, in the limit, what we see are pure, non-representative, empty shapes that exist by themselves.
This emphasis over the formal fact of shapes denotes a visual affinity with the bottles of colored-sand landscape from Brazil’s Northeast, for the representation pattern has the same nature. This craft manifestation is precisely originated in Ceará, state in which the artist was born. Another affinity remains on the simplification of the figures, that refers us to the Northeast clay sculptures and ex-votes.
In every representation something shows up and something hides; therefore, those who hide are not absent of form, but is only dissimulated, covered, mascarated, being invoked in a indirect way. Truth is, the experience in front of those paintings tell us of a happening that transcends the limits of the canvases, and this suggestive nature of form presentifies in the imaginary field this hidden reality more than it’s full visual representation would do.
The works here exposed do not present some banal, ordinary reality, but a visual lirism that searches for an intimate resonance in the observer. The present elements in the paintings do not show themselves as inert objects – before that, they are characters of a figurative event. In these images, the reverie preserves it’s originary potence, for the poetic act’s main atribute is precisely to re-encounter the original matrix of the dream. Thus, the usual, the common, participates in the oniric life, and is a fact of the imagination – does not exist anymore as some prosaic event.
On this exhibition by Paula Siebra, the nature of meaning present in the paintings arises by the living reminescences that habitate the affective memory of the artist. The buildings, the houses, may fall down; the objects may disappear physically over time, but the experiences they provoked remain intact – those are present and alive in her intimacy and are actually the raw material of her creative process. The objects from the paintings do not exist, therefore, as mental reproductions, nor as conceptual objects, but as affective references from those which compose her personal imaginary.
Consistently, in this presented reality, everything appears as an embryo; everything is an evocation; nothing, at first, is given in a direct and objective way. The world seems to back off, it seems it wants to play hide-and-seek. A patina covers it all up with some sort of mist, distancing the major happening from the audience, leaving only traces of a time lost in our memory.
In contrast, the shapes of the areas that shelter the objects emerge cropped with clarity, with its limits visibly defined. As each object is presented on the interior of a shape and, itself, possesses its own identity, for the spectator there will be two different references, two plans of meaning superimposed on the visual field.
So it happens because in every representation we will find this internal division between the represented and the materially configured, as two independent meaning dimensions. Consequently, the overlaying of references appears as a objective possibility of the formal constitution of the image.
The visual field shows itself constituted by areas of color that arise exalted in the foreground and that ask the objects to recede on the compositions. Those objects will show themselves by fragments, exhibiting only the sufficient to be recognized; still, in the limit, what we see are pure, non-representative, empty shapes that exist by themselves.
This emphasis over the formal fact of shapes denotes a visual affinity with the bottles of colored-sand landscape from Brazil’s Northeast, for the representation pattern has the same nature. This craft manifestation is precisely originated in Ceará, state in which the artist was born. Another affinity remains on the simplification of the figures, that refers us to the Northeast clay sculptures and ex-votes.
In every representation something shows up and something hides; therefore, those who hide are not absent of form, but is only dissimulated, covered, mascarated, being invoked in a indirect way. Truth is, the experience in front of those paintings tell us of a happening that transcends the limits of the canvases, and this suggestive nature of form presentifies in the imaginary field this hidden reality more than it’s full visual representation would do.
The works here exposed do not present some banal, ordinary reality, but a visual lirism that searches for an intimate resonance in the observer. The present elements in the paintings do not show themselves as inert objects – before that, they are characters of a figurative event. In these images, the reverie preserves it’s originary potence, for the poetic act’s main atribute is precisely to re-encounter the original matrix of the dream. Thus, the usual, the common, participates in the oniric life, and is a fact of the imagination – does not exist anymore as some prosaic event.