"Exspectata"  August 2013, Santiago, Chile. 

 

Patricia Ready Gallery

 

Macarena Rakos 

 

“We’re always trying to unite with the past, to incorporate it to the present, as it brings us experience and vital serenity, acquired over time”, says Elvira Valenzuela.

 

Taking a fresh look at the past in order to rediscover the present is the theme that Elvira presents in this exhibition. Exspectata = welcome (in reference to Latin, the origin of many contemporary languages), is an exspectata to the stone, the origin of our world. Referring only to the practice of art, stone was the first support as well as the first sculpted volume.

 

Steel, modern, up–to-date, immutable, represents the contemporary world, and up to now had been the protagonist in the artist’s sculpture. In these, stainless steel now receives the stone, purer and more fragile.

 

Revisiting the past in order to reinvent, to recreate. “The joining of these two materials alludes to the idea, and – why not? - the reality, that we are always looking at the past in order to continue building the future. That’s our reference. It Is enriching to build on the foundations of the past, on the origins, and coupling these with the future is our way of seeing the present,” notes Elvira.

 

When a stone is understood, it becomes a sculpture … it is alive, with textures, colors and forms that surprise. There begins this creative process, rethinking the stone together with the previously worked steel, which brings the stone serenity, once the piece is completed.

 

“A pile of stones ceases to be a pile of stones once a single man has contemplated it” (Antoine de Saint Exupéry),. This union contains not only a dialogue between past and present, it also connects light with heavy, and surfaces rough and smooth. Noteworthy are the monochromatic tones interrupted by the shades that emerge from the stone and the gleam of the steel’s reflections.

 

Thus the artistic process is generated from the observation of the unknown followed by a deconstruction at the meeting of the stone with the space created from steel. It is here, with the dichotomy of tensions, that the challenge is forged, between calm and surprise, the light and the ponderous, the known and the unknown.