María Olga Giménez

““…How nice it would be if we could only get through into Looking-glass House!
I’m sure it’s got, oh! such beautiful things in it! …
Let’s pretend the glass has got all soft like gauze,
so that we can get through! …
It’ll be easy enough to get through!
…In another moment Alice was through the glass,
and had jumped lightly down into the Looking-glass room.”

Water is nature’s looking glass, and is unique in its double capacity to mirror: from the light and through the shade. Considering that water makes up three quarters of the world and our bodies contain approximately the same proportion, we understand that each person has a mirror inside themselve that reflects with the same quality. The work of Patricia Claro naturally invokes out capacity to speculate, moving us to go beyond the surface of the mask in a similar way as Alice, using imagination and dreams. This entrance to the dream realm in art, particularly in landscape art, was recognized by Gastón Bachelard in 1942, who sustains that: “Only the landscapes we have seen first in our dreams are the ones we see with an aesthetic passion” .

Her creative process begins with a journey to the water where one always finds the same characteristic: they will be clear waters that mirror and reveal a calm and permanent movement. These waters act as an infinite source of different images submitted in each moment.

The water is the origin of the process, the first lens. The artist’s participation starts by mirroring herself, saving oneself from the gaze of Narcissus to allow that both mirrors are recognized and extend into their immensity. Here it is necessary to capture this moment by means of digital photography; to detain the scene in movement and conserve the sequence of fleeting reflections. The image chosen for the second lens of the process may contain one or more of the elements that will be represented in the pictoric work: the exterior landscape, of which the trees, a branch or the sky may form; and the interior landscape made by the depths of the water. It can also be present in the water itself, with its currents in the form of waves or its apparent stillness.

At the moment of reconstituding the materiality of the water or its body, brings out the importance of the existence of the movement within. This body depends on the possible refraction of light -that reveals the exterior-, or the presence of the shade, resulting from an external object -that reveals the interior. It is the product reflection of the movement of the water that permits the light to cover that which the shade reveals of the depths, acting as a veil. This play of light and shade creates a reversibility of the image that is appreciated at the inversion of the position of the painting: we see the sky that is water and a landscape of water and green that is sky.

Water clipping: and entrance into the time of nature

The photography taken on site represents an incision of death in the time of the water that freezes its flow. Lather, the process of cropping in the studio prolongs this action. Then it would be fitting to ask about the relationship that exists between the crop and the mirror.  

“Mirrors: to this day, no expertise can explain
the key to what you truly are;
filling the interstices of time’s plane
with mere holes as from a colander.

Spendthrifts of the vacant foyer —
wide as woods beneath twilight stars. ..
And the chandelier bounds like a sixteen-pointer
through your impenetrability.

Sometimes you are filled with canvases.
Some even seem absorbed into your depths —
other styles you timidly dismiss.

But the loveliest remains, until appears
Narcissus to press her chaste lips,
fully liberated and crystal clear.”

The poet Rainer Maria Rilke brings us closer to the answer: the mirror represents an interval of time, a cut in the linearity of the life it reflects. The water is part of the nature, whose time is circular and we share, in part, this indeterminable cycle of life and death. For this reason, when the artist is reflected in front of it, it creates a point of refraction between them that permits one to transfer the images beyond time. This makes possible that the sequence of clippings contributes to capture the final image of the water represented in the picture.

Claro’s technological eye is key in her “reflective” process. In a true virtual laboratory work, making use of digital programs, the image that will be the underlying layer of the work is translated through media. This third clipping of water understands the deconstruction and decomposition of the image in its basic geometric forms isolating the color, light and shade. It is significant that this work is realized as opposite the original: it is the machine -created by man- that has the capacity to isolate the elements of the natural landscape. bringing it to its state of primitive chaos.

The work in the studio constitutes a true reflective contemplation that captures time brushstroke by brushstroke. The canvas receives the image progressively, beginning with the light and continuing to the depths of to conforming the pictorial materiality. This is the reflective time of the artist, different than that of the water that mirrors in an instant. We see that three times exist in the work of Claro: the time of the water, the frozen instant; the time of the creative process; and the time of the viewer when they face the work that already makes a mirror.

Among those postulating from Land Art, Robert Smithson signals the existence of a relationship “between the earths surface, its features, etc., and the fallacies of though and fictions of the spirit. The sinking earth, the flaws, etc., are not produced solely in nature as in the human mind.” This idea affirms that the systematic process of destruction of the initial image corresponds with the crystallization of its impression on the subconscious of the artist as well as its reconstruction states the return to the consciousness of that image. the metaphor of the mirror represents this principal: the shadow of the water is the shadow of the mind, the subconscious, the unknown with respect to itself, and the light reflected is the identity of self.

We then have an image that begins with the water of nature and continues in the waters of the mind to emerge again as water in the piece, forming a trinity: water – mirror/mind – water.
The abstraction process to the image represents a conceptual reduction, based on bringing the imaged to their universal forms to later begin its appropriation on the canvas. The different cuts create the abstraction: the photographic, the framing in photoshop, and the clippings of the mask. Afterward, the layer of the reflection finishes the process, restoring the unity of the image.

The particular reconstruction of the landscape beginning from a selection of water represents a pictorial synecdoche, central concept in Patricia Claro’s proposal. The poetic subjectivity of the artist is incorporated through the feminine gaze toward a detail that is re-constitude. “Perhaps there does not exist an individuality in depth that makes the matter, in its smallest parts, be always a totality?” .

The result of this process is the work we have in front or us, that provokes the following question: How does our own mirror act in front of these waters?
The originality of the artist is manifested in the change of focus or gaze to the exterior, that goes from horizontal to vertical, similar to the view see by a satellite. This vertical gaze makes a global perception of nature and man possible, situating us in front of a grand horizontal mirror that transfers the surroundings in an infinite process: the water. This unitarian perception of the world is united to its technological look in respect to the handcraftedness and creative process implying the experimentation of traditional techniques and the use of digital medias, giving the work the multicultural connotation that places it in the contemporary world.

For Claro, the water will always be and aesthetic and poetic inspiration and source of inexhaustible composition. The video complementing the exposition is an example of this expressing the reflective capacity of the water when is mirrors itself, to be reflected and dejected at the same time. Also the group of works exhibited horizontally on the floor of the gallery permit the spatial return of the water to its natural place.

The spectator confronts the simultaneity of realism and abstraction: the distant gaze allows a realistic perception of the piece, while closer inspection reveals a collection of textures, marks and relief that makes up the materiality of the work. This experience concludes the reflective process initiated by the author, returning to the original time of the first instant of activating the reflection of another mirror.

• Bachelard, Gaston. El agua y los sueños. Ensayo sobre la imaginación de la materia. Fondo de Cultura Económica. Primera edición en español. México, 1978. 295 pp.
• Carrol, Lewis. Alicia en el país de las Maravillas. A través del Espejo. Editorial Cátedra. Quinta edición. Madrid, 2001. 388 pp.
• Claro Swinburn, Patricia. Corte y Reconstitución del paisaje: una Sinécdoque pictórica. Memoria de Grado presentada a la Escuela de Arte de la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Santiago de Chile, 2005.
• Diccionario de la Real Academia Española. Tomo I. Vigésimo segunda edición. Madrid, 2001. 1180 pp.
• Gombrich, E. H. La Historia del Arte. Editorial Debate. Edición número 16. Londres, 2006. 688 pp.
• Guasch, Anna María. Las vanguardias del siglo XX. Del posminimalismo a lo multicultural: 1968-1995. Ed. Alianza. Madrid, 2000.
• Rilke, Rainer Maria. Los sonetos a Orfeo. Traducción de Otto Dörr Zegers. Editorial Universitaria. Primera edición. Santiago de Chile, 2002. 219 pp.

“Re-Corte” Catálogo, Galería Animal, diciembre 2008.

Why did you choose water as the central theme of your work?

Water is an infinite source of images, a stage of movement that second to second reflects its surface like a mirror. Besides, that characteristics of its materiality allows me to abstract, play and change its rules, giving me the artistic freedom necessary to follow my aesthetic objective. I fix my gaze on water with a close environment that fills with color, transparent water, with capacity to mirror and reflect. This allows me to work the duality between light and shade, achieving the unity of the image representing the landscape.

In some way, water is the element of nature that permits one to transcend it in a way, to go deeper. What quality of water makes this dynamic possible?

In its external form, water is not definite. It is an absence that takes its presence from its environment. It needs something separate to manifest itself as it has no color, nor specific form. Upon recovering the image submitted and taking it to my studio, I also bring with me an absence. The water is no longer there. There are colors and the idea of an image that will end up being water again but in the form of an illusion.

The water projects everything around it, uniting various planes of the surroundings within.

Its a transfer medium: an image for processing is submitted, translating the landscape so it can be contemplated in its totality. This method of seeing the landscape “through” is similar to the actual look, from the twenty first century, to the world: a virtual approach through media.
The water, transformed in a natural mirror, gives us the first image “mediatized” from the surroundings, as if its gaze is naturally inserted in the modernity. The image is already reflected on the water screen and the photographic capture is a “re-mediatization” of the image.

Would it be possible to obtain this collection of instants from another source?

I don’t think so, because the visual that I record through painting I find only in a surface in movement or liquid territory. The movement is what permits the duality that gives expression to in my work: to see through the shadows of the environment the colors that reveal what is in the depths, and the reflection of the exterior on the surface by the light. The mobility creates the ripples allowing the contrast of mask-background and light-shadow, fundamentals in the construction of the illusion in the piece.
If the water is too quiet, I can disturb it with a stone, a drop or the oar of a boat. I need the movement so the surface of the water produces a mosaic effect and in it is found another luminosity.

You say that the duality, the co-existence of opposites, is one of the defining characteristics of the water you paint. How do you manage to translate this double reality to a single plane?

The reconstruction of the whole starting from the duality is achieved by breaking down the image, literally making two paintings. First, I dedicate myself to the background that I build by layers annulling the texture of the canvas: with a smooth thickness of pictorial matter I work including the refracted image form the water in the matter, in the paste. The second painting is the reflected image. The movement and light are what are drawn, posed over the shadow of the background. This strong light, produced by tan angle change or movement is painted masking the background that exists physically underneath the painted reflection. So, under the reflected light exists a background of water that is the background of the painting.

The technique that you use allows you to represent three planes present in the water: the water itself or its body, the exterior landscape, and its bottom. You reconstruct the three-dimensionality of the water that the human eye does not perceive simultaneously.

That is the central thesis of my work: the continuity after the record. To achieve this the use of virtual and digital media is fundamental. The camera allows me to register more information than that which the eye can retain. The photography that captures the sequences of the waves contains “multiple information” for processing. The instantaneous record allows me to identify and separate the different elements that are present in the frozen instant. Using the craft of the technology, I can deconstruct the image and later rebuild it.

Another characteristic of your paintings is the difference between the close and distant view.

That is given through the work of the technique that acts as a trap: from far away is appears like photo-realism, where the painting is recognized as a photo, but upon approach one realizes that there is a geometric treatment, a surface of brights and opacity; an almost abstract appearance. It begins to place with the co-existence of reality and abstraction. The use of this limit will determine the presence of disappearance of the water concept.

To maintain oneself on the edge must mean a risk, a vertigo.

Attempting to work on a detail is already risky, and the waves can be very abstract and are in danger of being lost. I stay connected to the color to give the suggestion of reality and I try to produce a 1:1 scale with the place: this contributes to the final dialogue of the work with the viewer. Both views, distant and closeup are proportionally scaled to the human eye.

Is the view and its possibilities what define your proposal?

The view of the detail is central to my work, detail that is shown as a total and forms the base of the concept pictorial synecdoche. I take the water as landscape and through this element I name the surroundings.
What is more, there exists a vertical view to the horizontal scene that represents the water obligating me to change my point of view to be able to arrive at its depths. This new view complements the idea of synecdoche, to permit the integration of the landscape and the different elements of which it’s made.

You mentioned that the water and its characteristics gives you the formal liberty you need to paint. This idea of freedom of form resonates with the definition of beauty by Schiller: “It is beauty that has the appearance of freedom”.

The freedom of movement and the forms produced in the water are the creative inspiration that allow the technical freedom; but behind this liberty is the essential, where the opposites are sustained in a permanent equilibrium.

This visual freedom suggests and idea of beauty related with the transcendence of the duality present in water.

The water is a totality uniting opposites manifested in different planes. The harmony and beauty is created by the fusion of the darkness of the depths with the brilliance of light on its surface. Also, through the coincidence of the form with the bottom that gives integrity to the landscape.
For eastern landscapers, the painting allows one to look at their own interior, suggesting that the representation of landscape has a direct relationship with who we are. In this way, the whole represented beginning with the present duality in water is a reflection of human nature, also dual and integrated at the same time. The difference with the oriental would be in the choice of detail that obliges one to abstract and arrive at the essential that later is extended as a whole, ceasing to be the description of a specific location.

Would you place yourself in the traditional group of landscape artists?

Water is an element of the landscape, so in this way I am a landscape artist. However, I create a reinterpretation of the landscape from a new focus, looking from the detail to the whole. Besides that, I work with technique in an experimental way.

Who would be references for you?

I have historical influences, such as Leonardo, of whom I have read a lot and always admired for his technique and capacity for analysis. His study of water includes more than just color: interested in waves, he analyzed its luminous capacity, the reflection and refraction though it. I cite it in my work in the smears and the velatures with which I build the images of the backgrounds. Also Monet, for his treatment of shadow in the reflection of landscape in the water.
Other references are connected with the current interrogations of the painter: How does one reinterpret an image processed through media that creates a personal reality from the painting? Why paint if photography registers the reality with insuperable precision? Vija Celmins with his details, Chuck Close with his faces and Gerhard Richter with his pictorial liberties have responded through their works. In them their central inspirations revealed is the painting and the human touch that from them is processed their own reality. We coincide in a sensibility of time, where the eye of the painter is behind the medias.
From another visual language, a contemporary artist bound to the landscape is Olafur Eliasson, who with very experimental methods approaches the viewer to the luminous sensations and atmospheres of the exterior, translated to the interior of an exhibition room; like bringing water physically to the museum. I do this with an illusion, however we fix the gaze on the same element.

Do you consider yourself part of the Land Art trend?

Historically, Land Art was an important moment for landscape in art. They leave the gallery room and the studios and go directly to the place to work, with the elements that are there, presenting their work as a record of this intervention. They marked a trend and were a defense for sculpture, photography and installations related with the landscape. I do not intervene the water as they intervene the earth, but the act of going to the place, studying it for days establishes a similarity between me and this trend.

The video that accompanies the exposition is part of your experimentation over water and its liberties?

The video investigated the reflective capacity of the water from another visual medium. I exercised seeing what really happened upon re-mirroring the water upon turning around the image. Highlighting the dualism between the movement of the upper part of the current, the light, and the refracted part of the shade that remains static, fusing them together in a single image.

Your work is a piece of time in nature…

That recorded instant on this natural screen claims a new time in the pictorial process, being the strategy of return that allows us to contemplate the human convention that we encode as landscape. It is my own form of recreating nature through the infinite source of image and life that is water.

References:

– Schiller, Friedrich. Kallias o sobre la belleza. Editorial Tecnos. Primera edición. Madrid, 2000. P. 16. 249 pp.