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INTERIOR LIGHT
Celia
Gradín Montero
Artist and space creator, Celia Gradín (Pontevedra,
1963), has worked in La Coruña, London, Montreal, Montpellier,
and Barcelona, where she currently resides. For this occasion, she presents
in the Art & Schilling a summary of her past artistic career, from the
first of her mobiles to her most recent productions centered around
the creation of objects (furniture, glass boxes, lamps...), installations,
decoration, and space creation. Her most recent exhibitions have taken
place in Montpellier and Barcelona. In the French city she has participated
in the collective exhibition of artistic exchange between Montpellier-Barcelona
(1997), in individual exhibitions in the Hôtel Climat de France and
in Poisson d'Avril (both in 1997). Her latest productions in Barcelona
have been seen in the Original gallery (1996), Muebles Imposibles, in
the Primavera del Disseny show (1997), Sol Sureda (1997), Escenes del
Raval (Casa de la Caritat, 1998), and in the self-portrait workshop
at the MACBA (1998), to name a few.
Concurrent with her first creations based on the fabrication of mobiles
and mosaics (Flores in Mi Jardín,1995), Celia Gradín has worked in more
traditional media like abstract oil painting (Laberinto Orgánico I,
1990 and Laberinto Orgánico II, 1991/6), full of color and representation
of labyrinth-like organic forms. Her later experiences, of which the
exhibition in Art & Schilling is an example, have been more along the
lines of object creation, begun in her period of mobiles, mosaics, and
light boxes. The various materials used in the this field, as can be
seen in the exhibition, are extracted from daily surroundings (dyed
wools, mirrors, cellophane, shards of glass, mosaic tiles, sand, stones,
nets,...), alluding to the idea of fragmentation and construction of
objects and to the need to express the artistic work as a form of personal
meditation, manifesting visually the time past. Currently, this construction
of objects has been converted into the construction of spaces.
Following her first mosaics, there is produced in her works an expansion
toward other a rtistic experiences. She passes from the mosaic with
its flat and opaque nature to her glass and light boxes -an evolution
toward the world of transparence. In these, the space is organized in
many levels of transparent mosaic. Color disappears and the sensation
of timeless void as a form of self-seeking introspection prevails. Beyond
this introspection comes an opening toward the observer. The light illuminates
the immobile material. Agates suspended in nebulous sand are contrasted
by the light shining through a background, symbolizing the contrast
between the sky (light) and the earth (matter), void and matter. These
creations are intended to demonstrate to the observer the sensation
of having arrived at the complete, showing the ephemeral nature of an
instant of life. If the gaze was before from the outside inward, it
is now the inverse.
This process of reflection and artistic experimentation finally leads
her to the creation of spaces, the area upon which her current work
is based. In the installation that constitutes the final section of
the exhibition is capsulized all of her previous thought. It alludes
to the personal sentiment toward the bonds which she has encountered
on her path and makes light of them. The underlying message that can
be read into this installation, despite the clear allusion to the death
of the personal experience of art, is one of optimism. The artist reaffirms
what have always been her primary convictions: life and liberty manifested
by the sounds of seagulls and the beating of a heart. In an era which
seems to take for granted the impossibility of the artistic experience,
Celia Gradín personally affirms that she has decided to continue.
Redacción: Marisa Herrero Membrado, historiadora del arte.
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