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| Parcial view of the exhibition "Water Glances" |
When
Gastón Bachelard wrote his series of essays on the elements, he sought to delve
into the material —substantial— slopes of the imagination and rescue, for
aesthetic analysis, “the constitutive belonging of the human being to the world
of images” —in comparison, for example, that of ideas. In his famous book Water
and Dreams, Bachelard inquired about the archetypal forces of water as a
source of poetic imagery, prioritizing its qualities of transitoriness,
diluting power, or purity over themes that are more obviously related to it,
such as the sea or the rain. For this French thinker, the properties of water
connected it mainly with yin, feminine energy, and made it the deepest
of all the elements due to its symbolic links with the unconscious.
“Water
Glances” brings together six artists ―Claudia Cebrian, Lara Di Cione, Sofía
Maldonado, Daniela Quilici, Carmen Smith, and Toña Vegas― who have carried out
works around this element. Although the group is diverse in languages,
modalities, and techniques, these creators share practices in which the
conceptual focus slides towards subjectivism by integrating intuition, emotion,
and inner contemplation, allowing the image’s suggestive, almost metaphorical,
appearance. In these works, we wanted to see the flow of the “dream water
physiology” proposed by Bachelard, understanding that the artistic image is
also a soluble field that is able to reflect what is mutable and indefinite in
us.
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| Photographs by Claudia Cebrian |
Claudia Cebrian’s
photography settles on the edge of the oneiric sphere. Avoiding the surrealist
radicalism but maintaining the force of the enigma, Cebrian creates images
where nature and the feminine world converge in mysterious relationships.
Psychological experiences as a woman and an immigrant shape a good part of her
work. However, this is not entirely autobiographical since her narratives
recreate stories shared by a community. Water, a constant in her photos,
acquires a symbolic character. It can allude to the unfailing current of life,
to the amniotic sac —which provides interior nutrition and shelter—, or to the
purity of nature, among other possible associations. The images in her Oasis
series can be studied in relation to the “Ophelia complex” described by
Bachelard. The similarities between these and Ophelia, the famous
painting by John Everett Millais (1851-52), are remarkable. In them,
melancholic water surrounds the palpable tensions between life, youth, love, and
confrontations with death. The virgin water sacralizes the natural cycles of
fertility and mortality.
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| Claudia Cebrian. From Oasis Series, 2020 Archival digital print |
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| Claudia Cebrian Adrift. From Promise Land Series, 2016 Archival digital print |
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| Claudia Cebrian. Mermaid. From Reborn Series, 2016 Analog capture. Archival pigment print |
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| Claudia Cebrian. Balance, 2021 Collage |
Lara
Di Cione began to create her Swimmers due to her
interest in water’s distortions in the perception of submerged bodies. To make
them, she takes pictures of people she knows diving and swimming in a pool.
This process allows her to fuel an atavistic confrontation: the contrast of
beautiful/known things with their counterparts, the deformed/unknown ones. It
was Bachelard who precisely pointed out this dual character of water, relating
it to the psychological states of desire and fear that it instills. But Di
Cione’s work is forged, above all, in her fascination with the refractive
capacity of the element. She uses a watery medium ―acrylic― in various degrees
of dilution, not only to translate this quality on shapes but also to show the
capacity of water to erode bodies and images. The free brushstrokes and the
chromatic intensity underline the expressiveness of these pieces. These ambiguous
spaces and distorted shapes produced by water ―according to Bachelard―
originate the reverie, the only starting point for the emergence of poetry and
art.
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| Lara Di Cione. Butterfly swimmer, 2019-2021 Acrylic on canvas |
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| Lara Di Cione. Emergent swimmer, 2019-2021 Acrylic on canvas |
Sofía
Maldonado created Dead Waters after leaving her home
country to move to Spain. The travel and the changes it entailed, experienced during
the Covid-19 global crisis, were immediately reflected in her work. Maldonado
grew up near the Caribbean Sea in Puerto Rico, so “tropicality” has been a
fundamental part of her visual language. This tropicality is shown, for
example, in the vivid color of her murals. Dead Waters suggests,
instead, a dark and dense ocean. Here, the artist utilizes rich blacks, and
also uses a thick acrylic paste to amplify the volume of the brushstrokes. The
persistent verticality of her previous works ―made by superimposing fields of
color and abundant drippings― has been changed by the horizon line and oblique,
ascending strokes. They recall the leaden waves of the open sea, struggling
from the depths against gravity, or their breaking crash against the rocks. It
is the violent water defined by Bachelard as charged with yan energy,
stormy and transforming. It is the water of courage and a new beginning, accompanying
the initiatory transitions and the rabid fight against adversity.
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| Sofía Maldonado. Dead Waters I, 2021. Acrylic on linen |
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| Sofía Maldonado. Dead Waters III, 2021. Acrylic on linen |
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| Sofía Maldonado. Dead Waters IV, 2021. Acrylic on linen |
Daniela
Quilici’s creative exercise flows from a sensitivity subtly
guided by intuition. Her language has been forged by listening to the silent
voices of nature and by carefully following the resonances they produce within
her subjectivity. In her work, form is inseparable from matter. It is from the
sensitive investigation of what the material is and says that form emerges in harmony
with emotions and delicate perceptions. The qualities of water, studied by
Bachelard, are present in this spontaneous and vital work. It has a dreamlike
quality. The sea or the foam are, in these instances, indefinable. The diluted
blue stains, the impastos, and the crayon stroke evoke the unrepeatable moments
of natural poetry in which the rhythm of a breath matches with the rhythm of a
licking wave. Quilici also works with clay in her need to give body to these reveries
that depart from and return to nature―creating new marine plants, animals, and
shells, providing an image of the seabed. The paste, a mixture of earth and
water, is for Bachelard the archetypal matter that marks the organic origins of
life.
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| Daniela Quilici. From Limits Series, N° 1, N° 2, N° 3, N° 4, N° 5 y N° 6, 2021 Acrylic and watercolor pencils on Fabriano paper |
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| Daniela Quilici. From Écume Series, 2021 Acrylic, watercolor, cigar ash, wet clay, and ink on paper |
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| Daniela Quilici. Female Shell, 2021 Glazed ceramic and knitted placemat |
Carmen
Smith’s paintings represent solitary scenes where
architecture has a predominant role. The artist focuses on areas that are
neither strictly outside nor inside the houses and condominiums. These
recreation areas replicate the goodness of natural environments. They are, in a
way, nature’s substitutes and usually include gardens and swimming pools. For
Bachelard, the lake constituted the “eye of the world,” a place that reflects
the sky and where the earth could see itself. Then, the “waterhole” is a substantial
part of the archetypal natural landscape that the urban recreation area
imitates. Smith’s synthetic language ―amid the company of Edward Hopper and
Alex Katz, among other American artists― creates almost abstract planes in
which perspective triggers intense clashes of light and shadow. The almost
electric tones underline the enigmatic atmosphere of these images. Although for
Bachelard, the water in the pools had lost its connection with the telluric
forces, the urban waterholes, aesthetically re-signified in Smith’s work
acquire symbolic potential.
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| Carmen Smith. Sunset Slide, 2022 Oil on canvas |
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| Carmen Smith. Winter Pool, 2021 Oil on canvas |
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| Carmen Smith. Evolution of Memory II and III, 2021 Oil on canvas |
When
Bachelard spoke about “water’s morality,” he underlined that water’s symbolic
purity plays a fundamental role in the psychological construction of
valuations, especially in man’s relationship with the sacred spheres. In this
sense, pure/purifying water is not only clean water but, an immaculate one,
emerged from natural sources that keep alive its symbolic links with telluric
and transcendent forces. Toña Vegas’ work originates from a penetrating
contemplative exercise. Photography is the starting point for her Shizen
and Traces series, in which the artist wants to reveal and record the
secret scriptures inscribed by nature on vegetation, rocks, clouds, and, in
this case, water. Vegas creates high contrast images, revealing essential
lines. Then, she translates them into perforations on black-painted paper and
into “positive” silhouettes on white sheets. This process of graphic depuration
ritualizes, in a certain way, the search for the essential features of the
element/image―those features engraved in its physical being after the subtle
exchanges that rule the formation and transformation of energy and matter.
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| Toña Vegas. Water. Traces Series, 2018. Black gesso and Hähnemühle paper Water. Shizen Series, 2018. Perforated handmade paper and black gesso Water. Shizen Series, 2018. Perforated handmade paper and black gesso |
Claudia Cebrian (Buenos Aires,
Argentina)
She studied Advertising (Universidad del Salvador, 1986) and Photography (Escuela Argentina de Fotografía, 1996) in Buenos Aires, where she made her first works in artistic and editorial photography. There, she began to exhibit and be published in magazines such as El Jardín de Argentina and Elle. In 2001, she moved to Miami. She continued her training by attending courses and workshops in the United States and Argentina. She has participated in exhibitions in Buenos Aires, Boston, Miami, Orlando, and New York. Her work has received numerous awards, including the honorable mention obtained in 2020 in L.A. Photo Curator: Global Photography Awards. She currently lives in Miami.
Lara Di Cione (Caracas, Venezuela)
Sofía Maldonado (San Juan, Puerto Rico)
She
earned a BFA from the Escuela de Artes Plásticas de Puerto Rico (2006) and an MFA from Pratt Institute (New York,
2008). Her career has focused on public art, with site-specific projects and wide-color fields abstract
murals made within uninhabited buildings. She has participated in select
group exhibitions such as the Whitney Museum Biennial
(NY, 2017), “On Painting” (CAAM, Gran Canarias, 2013), and the 10th Havana
Biennial (2008). She has held solo shows in Puerto Rico, New York, Philadelphia,
Madison, Los Angeles, and Amsterdam. In 2012 she was awarded the Manhattan
Community Arts Fund Grant, LMCC (New York). She currently lives between Madrid
and Puerto Rico.
Daniela Quilici (Paris, France)
She spent her early life in Venezuela. In 1999 she returned to Paris. There, she studies at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts (Bachelor of Sculpture and Drawing, 2006; Master of Fine Arts, 2009). In 2008 she attended the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Basque Country as part of the Erasmus student exchange. She has carried out artistic residencies at the Albert Gleizes Foundation (Les Sablons, 2012) and at the Fundación El Semillero (Maracaibo, 2011). She has participated in group exhibitions in Caracas, Maracaibo, Valencia, Mérida (Venezuela), Buenos Aires, Paris, and London. Among her various individual exhibitions, the one held at the Ateneo de Caracas in 2013 stands out. She currently lives in Bagneux, France.
Carmen Smith (Jacksonville, FL, USA)
She moved to South Florida in 2008 after she earned a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts (Richmond, VA), where she was granted the Academic and Creative Excellence Award. She started to exhibit in 2016. So far, she has participated in more than 15 juried shows, receiving the Merit Certificate in both 2017 and 2018 editions of the Annual “Paint Me Miami” Art Competition. She has been part of several group exhibition such as “The Portfolio Review Series”, Coral Gables Museum (Miami, 2019) and “Everything Old Is New Again”, Superfine! NYC Art Fair Curated Gallery (New York, 2017). In 2021, she held a solo exhibition, “Night Swimming”, at Second Street Gallery (Charlottesville, VA).
Toña Vegas (Caracas, Venezuela)
She was raised in Caracas, Venezuela, where she received a BA in Psychology, studied graphic arts at the Center for Graphic Arts (CEGRA), and mentored with artists Mercedes Pardo and Alejandro Otero. Among her solo shows are “Energy Matters” at Imago Art in Action (Miami, 2019), “Inventory/takes” at The Clemente Center (New York, 2017) in tandem with Tony Vazquez-Figueroa, and “Universe of Silence” at G Siete Galería (Caracas, 2012). Her work has been exhibited at international art fairs, museums, and galleries in Caracas, Maracay, Mérida (Venezuela), New York, Strasbourg, and Miami. Her site-specific installations can be seen in Caracas and Miami. She lives in Miami from 2017.
© Katherine Chacón
* This text was written for "Water Glances" exhibition, presented at Imago Art in Action (Coral Gables, Florida), from February 27 to May 15, 2022.
It was also published in the "Papel Literario" of El Nacional on April 3, 2022. Link: Miradas de agua (Spanish)
Exhibition Press:
El Universal, Caracas (Spanish)
Interview with Cesar Miguel Rondon (Spanish)
Diario Las Américas, Miami (Spanish)
Analítica, Caracas (Spanish)
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