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Concha García
S/T,
2012
Escultura, modera y ceramica
medidas
variables
Courtesy
of Galeria Pilar Serra, Madrid
CONCHA
GARCÍA
La mirada asombrada
20 March
to 28 April
La mirada asombrada (The astonished
glance), the latest exhibition from Concha
García in the Pilar Serra gallery,
uses the manipulation of daily objects in order to return to
concepts that have been a constant in her artistic work: the
private, time and the everyday are intermingled in a frozen
and apparently static present, which, in every detail, throbs
with major questions regarding the vulnerability of the
physical and its manifestation.
The
sample, made up of various sculptural installations of
furniture and ceramics, different works on paper, a book of
poems by the Japanese writer Kuan Tao-Sheng and a video,
proposes a reflection surrounding the transformation of matter
and its consequences: from the concealment of its effects up
to its exaltation, passing through the concerns which can
result from the fragility of the physical or the harm that can
be caused following the exposure of what was masked. And we
the spectators, in a way that is almost clandestine, witness
the result of a metamorphosis, we do not know when it has
taken place nor if it will continue, but of which we are and
feel to be a central part.
Whether regarded individually or as a whole, each
of the pieces of the exhibition acquires on inspection its own
voice, almost human, a reflection and metaphor of the
relations that are set up between the being with itself, and
between the being and its most private, most protective,
environment. It is not by chance that, as in this case, the
recurrent protagonists in the sculpture of Concha García are
furniture and ceramics, objects with very specific functions
within the daily flow, which symbolize moments, aspects of our
most intimate world, and which, when stripped of their prime
essence: the function, enter into crisis, promoting
uncertainty, which “seems to be the word that best defines the
state of the individual”, as the artist comments.
So,
armchairs, seats and pots are transformed into one or another
form by her hands, coming to acquire a certain humanity in
their positions of relation with the space surrounding them.
The artist breathes a “puff” on them which provides them with
the subtlety of life, characterized by temporality, by the
time which, as with all beings that are born, little by little
brings them closer to death. And it is in this particular
moment that the work of Concha García takes on the
characteristic most inherent to her, that of showing the
beauty of the imperfect, of the transformable, of – in the end
– matter. The physical, with nothing hidden, becomes the
protagonist and symbolically, from the appearance of the
object trouvé, provides evidence of the traces of existence.
Because as she notes, “objects, like people, are borne, they
live and die […] We are frightened by the unexpected
reflection of a shadow on the clean, smooth and immaculate
surface which they once had, which we once had. The objects
that are presented here reveal to us the beauty of the
transformation compared to restoration, of the expired
compared to the perennial […] Recovering La mirada asombrada
in which time is not an enemy to be defeated but rather the
place where dreams reside”. In this exhibition, Concha García
proposes a song to the beauty of what is alive and is
unrepeatable, showing its scars and absences which, far from
being covered, are exposed to the light in all their
splendour.
As
well as nationally, the work of Concha García (Santander,
1960) has also been exhibited internationally in countries
such as Japan, Germany, Italy, France and Poland. It can also
be found in museums and collections such as the Museo Nacional
Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, La Caixa Foundation, Santander Art
Museum, the collections of the Caja de Burgos, the Patio
Herreriano Museum in Valladolid or the Artium Museum in
Vitoria. Her artistic career has led to her receiving numerous
awards, notable among which are the Pablo Picasso First Prize
for engraving and drawing of the Spanish Ministry of Culture,
First Prize in the Julio Prieto Nespereira International
Biennial for Engraving, Madrid First Prize for Engraving,
Second Prize for Sculpture in the VI Competition of the
Professional Football Foundation or Gregorio Prieto First
Prize for Drawing; and the winning of prestigious grants such
as from the Marcelino Botín Foundation or that of the Ministry
of Culture in the Colegio de España in Paris.
GALERÍA PILAR SERRA
Almagro, 44
28010
Madrid
Spain
T:
+34 91 308 15 69 /70
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