Patricia Claro was born in Santiago, Chile (1960). She studied Visual Arts (2006) and Design (1983), both at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. From 1981 to 2009, she participated in workshops by various artists where she studied painting and engraving techniques. The decision to study a second major (Visual Arts), after a long period of experimenting with different techniques, consolidated a stage of artistic and theoretic formation. This incited a painting and video work which lead to a new approach towards the theme of landscape.

She is conducting a visual investigation on the theme of landscape and water as the infinite source of images. Her personal interpretation of this scenario in movement is the result of a rigorous experimental study of the dual quality of water and its reflections. She proposes new expressive possibilities, emphasizing her particular vertical view towards landscape which demonstrate the capacity of water to reflect the environment.

She has received the grant Fondart 07, from the government of Chile, for the project “Final Landscape” which is about pictorial restoration of Patagonia. She has also won the Academic Excellence Award in both majors of Visual Arts and Design
in Universidad Católica de Chile. She has participated in IV BIENAL DEL FIN DEL MUNDO, ”CONTRASTES Y UTUPÍAS” (2015) in Valparaíso, Chile, curated Massimo Scaringella and II BIENAL DEL FIN DEL MUNDO, “INTEMPERIE” (2009) in Ushuaia, Argentina, curated by Alfons Hug. Selected for “FRESH PAINT” Project (2012), book edited by curator Selene Wendt, The Stenersen Museum, Oslo, Norway, that includes artists as Wangechi Mutu, Kehinde Wiley, Elizabeth Peyton among others. Selected by Art Critics Organization, AICA, for exhibition DOCE X DOCE (2009), twelve selected artists, Sala Universidad de Talca, Santiago, Chile. Professor, School of Arts, Universidad Católica de Chile, conducting painting studio and developing projects.

STATEMENT

By investigating water’s behavior from a personal perspective, Patricia Claro places in this resource –a national and world heritage– the object of her research, focusing on the creation of new crosses and views in relation to the landscape, specifically the landscape reflected in freshwater; liquid landscapes. The water chosen by the artist belongs solely to 0.0002% of the planet’s waters, which frames her investigation in the context of the water crisis at a national and global level and recreates freshwater sources through images that convey its physicality and specular ability through dynamism between light, the background and the environment, using the metaphor of overflow in her frames.

Claro’s multidisciplinary course work; pictorial sequences, videos, prints, intervened photographs and installations, capture the notion of temporality by recording the flow of water for extended periods of time and its speculate capacity. By capturing the variations in the intensity of light, the transformations that happen to water due to changing atmospherical conditions are revealed, showing their behavior in certain climatic, geographic and temporary conditions, among others, placing her work within the hydrography of the planet and its ecosystem.

In the mirrored surfaces of water, her works reveal a particular form of distortion of the environment which is the basis for digitally extracting ideograms, which form an indecipherable script from nature. From this set of non-verbal signs written by light and movement, Claro extracts forms that make water an abstract language. These water forms, or “Aguagramas”, become part of texts that Claro calls “Water letters.” Although Claro’s work is focused on an intensive study of water and its characteristics, with a highly scientific and analytical approach, the artist takes her work a step beyond reality, dabbling in poetic resources to reflect from a contemporary position in relation to nature, where everything is coexisting in tension and continuous negotiation between the limits of necessity and freedom, seeing if it is possible to sustain living together.

Galería Animal (Santiago, Chile)
Frederico Seve Gallery (New York, USA)