Misterio y Evolución

Fundación Telefónica presents "At the Edge", the most recent work by Paloma Navares, one of Spain’s most internationally acclaimed visual artists. The exhibit is one of multimedia, containing videos, installations, recordings, drawings, photographs and enigmatic objects.

The exhibit is made up of two parts: the first containing the personal movements of the artist and her vital psychological experiences over a period of time, and the second containing a group of personalities with whom the view can make a personal connection.

At the edge brings together works that are disparate in nature. However, they are assembled together in an autobiographical tone, with common ingredients being the topics of illness, loneliness and isolation. As is typical in Navares’ work, there is great variety in the technological supports and means of expression, including
installations, sculptures, objects, and this time, even drawings.

The exhibit is to be presented today in Madrid, with the artist herself in attendance, as well as Santiago Muñoz Bastide, Art Director of the Fundación Telefónica.

A PERSONAL AND COLLECTIVE TRIP THROUGH THE SPHERES OF LONLINESS

Transit, the Color of Memory, located on the lower floor, contains the vital psychological experiences of Navares in a conditioned time period. It plays with reality and fiction, showing images of reality and memories of real recorded fragments (in videos, photos, notes, and sound recordings). Through these images the artist shows us the duality with which a person must cope. Pieces such as Unit O, Dream Unit, Rest Unit, made from real images, have signs and automatic sounds added to them, based on the sounds recorded during a state of rest or convalescence. These are large cibatrans photos inside of illuminated boxes that represent the patient’s body reclining in bed or in a bathtub.

The upper floor of the exhibit contains the next step in the continuum of this physical-psychological state of convalescence. The visitor encounters representations that in some way allude to persons who have been or are undergoing treatments, with their emotional equilibrium affected as result.

The works deal with fragments of text (mostly lyrical) written in silver pencil atop black and white photographs or on strips of paper rolled up in glass heads; The cibatrans photos reflect images of intense color; The videos and three-dimensional objects in black and white have drawings and silver writing on them. The series "Dreams of Memory" includes videos that mix together color and black and white images.

PALOMA NAVARES’ INSTALLATIONS

Unlike many works that tend to be presented with the title of "installation", Navares sets up a reciprocal relationship between her pieces and the person viewing them, and between the space where the pieces are situated and where the viewer is situated.

Navares is interested in showing enigmatic objects that allude both to a generic situation of anguish and to that of her own confinement. Her work is an investigation that seeks its own voice to describe this situation.

According to critics, Paloma Navares the artist is not interested in transmitting the entirety of her vital experiences, nor in creating a self-portrait in the traditional manner. Rather, she builds a "diffuse space" within the changing genre of autobiography.

"At the edge" is a multimedia self-portrait of great intensity. For viewers it is an exhibit that simultaneously points to several capital issues: loneliness, sadness and pain, immateriality and the fragility of being.

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