arteconsultores

FIGURE AND NATURE

Recent work by Carolina Convers

OPENING

Thursday, March 15, 2012, 7 pm

EXHIBIT

March 15 to April 12, 2012



Carolina Convers or the Coherence of a View

More than 50 years ago, British critic Lawrence Alloway used the expression "popular culture" that today, in the light of the vagaries of  fine arts, has acquired a broad meaning affecting and at times determining many byways of art. Although personally I do not share the idea of calling, certain demonstrations inspired by trends of the 1960s as  "Neo-Pop" because I rather think that this movement still exists and, therefore to speak of "neo" is almost rude; the term "pop" evokes a very bright stage of creation, and encourages a timelessness feeling of aesthetics as captured by the greatest masters as Wharhol, Rauscernberg, Lichtenstein, Oldenburg or Hockney. The review, or perhaps the emphasis on one of the key guidelines of the 20th century, has become a feedback of plastic arts evolution in which nothing expires; it has become a paradigm and certainly arises as a starting point for some of the most significant contemporary polls. It includes Postmodernism, whose traces are still determining a language. Of course, most of the reviews of "pop" made by contemporary artists usually lack an authenticity label, or rather a legitimacy, which guarantees a serious work of recognition and identification, as well as the unequivocal research and acceptance of sources. 

It is certainly this deep inquiry around a universe, so rich in forms, colors and mostly in guesswork and premises that has allowed Carolina Convers to make her own and "sui generis" approach in her art work and to find a route whose legitimacy leaves no doubt in trying to score, first and foremost, from a conceptual rigor to reach a rare pictorial level. She, by being nourished from everything that surrounds her, does not hesitate to plunge herself consciously into a far-reaching artistic moment, accepting it with strength, but analyzing it in depth and exploring all its possibilities to re-elaborate moments and even modes under her own optics. The path, besides from enabling her to find countless and unexpected creative solutions, leads her to be moved by her surroundings, to laugh sometimes, impregnating her work with humor, or to link the viewer with very refined sparks of sensitivity, so the viewer is able to take part in a wide range of images and codes that have allowed her to establish a unique way of viewing from different edges and suggestions, which impregnate each of her works. The amazing fact is that the artist has not become contented by accepting the undeniable influence of the great masters of Pop Art and, at times, making a tribute to it. She has gone far beyond in order to forge a style, a language with her own grammar; she has searched for other foundations and from the conclusions reached, she has assumed a privileged position from which she has given to the different pieces, signs from her inquiries, giving them at the same time an unmistakable stamp. The lags of a sort of postmodernist expressionism, are frequently observed as well as the use of photography in the manner of great surrealists as Man Ray and her works even trace of some linkages with abstraction.

Far beyond from the purely formal, works by Carolina Convers have a conceptual effectiveness related both to her intention and obviously to the content. This gives her works a distinctive individuality. Indeed, each proposal seems to have its own revision of the surrounding environment, often critical, and also impregnated of that intimate world perhaps, but at the same time collective, that ranges between the amazing and the real, which ultimately seems to be determined by a continuation of change and in any case by a certain degree of nostalgia. In her works, which are of course figurative, but sometimes not so much, from a very definite conceptualism, the colors, design, the subtle reference to industrial aspects, the traces of a consumerism at any cost, the permanent annotations permanent of the so called fashion, are present as evidence and, at the same time, as demonstration of the existence of a vestige or perhaps a link with memory labyrinths. 

The flawless pictorial technique, leading towards an unusual interest, another of the features of her works, is the insistence on observing frivolity, sometimes up to a certain fussiness, which plays a decisive role and becomes at the same time, a central theme and the conductor thread. The issue has to do with daily life and recollection, but also expresses the need to generate a permanent reflection by a spectator, whose view is also enriched with a fascinating chromaticism and the discovery of very suggestive traces of influences and signals some detailed surveys. At times, one has the impression that the artist would like to synthesize in the conjunction of paths, seemingly contradictory, the uniqueness of her complementary works, her own plastic art which emerges from the depth of a work filled with goals which are not unknown, as it obviously happens in this media era, the importance of a graph which suggests new forms to approach an aesthetic event. 

Coherence is a virtue few artists have on the contemporary scene. However, in the case of Carolina Convers is possible, since her very first works, marked by a few color patches which seemed to be related to a search of a sort of neo-abstraction, and to some extent with a expressionist abstraction, but filled with a detonating color, discovering a common thread which offers the viewer the possibility of following a solid connection and to walk boldly through a myriad of sensations and through a disturbing formal exploration, which is at the same time filled daily life references. In other words, an assortment of elements are interwoven in a large work and a remarkable ambition, and are carried through a few roads which combine the richness of the form with poetry, with the intention, the metaphor and even with humor. The universe of Carolina Convers, as the world of most significant artists, is ambiguous because it is rich with its intentions and also with the unconscious, without prejudice, and of course with  a view around pop art and its own popular interpretation. In short, an analysis and pondering successions combined with mastery in art produce a work of art filled with singularities and in any case, with a subtle and certainly unusual freshness. 

Fernando Toledo

Translation

Sandra Convers Painter