| 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 |
