Sandra Szkolnik. "Folds" (English version) *

 

This exhibition is the result of the methodical and constant investigation Sandra Szkolnik (Lima, Peru, 1968) has been carrying out for more than four years regarding the expressive possibilities of lines and volumes generated by straight folds.

Early on, Szkolnik was inspired by origami, but her interests were not directed at the construction of figures—as in the traditional Japanese technique—but to the behavior of the regular modules that are progressively created by folding.

Within this apparently simple—but certainly infinite—focus of exploration, the artist traced the routes of what would be the visual formulations of her creative practice. In this, research on materials has been fundamental. The triangular modules, the basis of her language, needed to acquire not only physical consistency but also to adequately express the artist's studied chromaticism. In addition, the flexibility of folds had to be manifested.

Additionally, Szkolnik's work updates the tensions established by flat and three-dimensional modular developments, as we see in her Folds, but also in her Unfolds, or in pieces such as Folded Connections, where the volume is barely tangible. 

Fold & Unfold/Black and White, 2023. Acrylic laminated, vinyl, and plexiglass.

Folded Connections/Canyon and Beige, 2023. Acrylic laminated, vinyl, and plexiglass

Szkolnik also incorporates a haptic game between real and suggested possibilities of the viewer's intervention. Although her first pieces were made so that spectators could arrange them “in their own way” using magnets on a flat surface—a device that is still used in her small-format production—, the artist has regulated this intervention in her later work, establishing tensions between the invitation to be manipulated generated by the folded forms and the real possibilities of manipulation. Although the Monochromatic Folds are attached with magnets, they only permit a minimal intervention; the Folded Modules or the sculptures titled Standing Folds are static volumes, mimetic folds that, nevertheless, maintain the dynamic potential of these tensioned bodies. The exhibition includes the piece Folds in Connected Panels, whose three-dimensional modules can be repositioned with respect to the flat slats in the background.

Monochromatic Folds (Ruby, Graphite and Deep Blue). 

All: 2002. Acrylic laminated, vinyl, plexiglass, stainless steel and magnets

Folded Modules (Silver and Blue/Blue, Silver and Red/Red, Silver and Red/Blue, and Silver and Red/Silver)

All: 2023. Acrylic laminate, vinyl, fiberglass and magnets.

Standing Folds/White and Orange, 2023. Acrylic laminate, vinyl, aluminum, and quartz

Standing Folds/White and Green, 2023. Acrylic laminate, vinyl, aluminum, and quartz

Szkolnik actualizes in her work a deep interest in constructing a grammar of space, in which volumetric and flat, visible and invisible, expanded and folded, multiplied and divided forms, would make up the signs to be interpreted.

In these reflections, the artist has incorporated the study of rhizomatic developments proposed by philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Her pieces are, in her words, “rhizomatic moments” in which there is neither a linear growth nor a center, but a tree-like and multiple progress that, in some way, relates them to the psychological, social and cultural realities of the contemporaneity.

* This text was originally written for the exhibition of the same name, curated by me and held at Imago Art in Action. Miami, September 9, 2023-January 7, 2024.  

© Katherine Chacón