Horror Vacui
The day that Eloisa summoned me to write the text of his new exhibition, I found out that a close relative had a tumor in his brain. With a very cliché defense mechanism, I knew how to cover myself with work and everyday tasks so as not to focus on what was bothering me. I devoted hours to meaningless activities, or rather, absolute sense in a context of hyperposting and verbiage of stories And although I did not stop going to exhibitions and visiting museums, I got used to dwelling on beauty and fun. Then Eloisa appeared, like an inevitable animal on the road, like that woman who always scares me when the elevator doors of my building open and I am distracted. For those coincidences of life, I started my 2018 at her home, but with her I spoke for the first time seven months later. I remember entering his property and feeling that the disposition of the place was planned to breathe.
There was a harmonious balance between the protagonism of the objects and the people who circulated. As every year, I spent hours decorating the end of the year table. In search of ornaments, I went through the spaces with great attention. I studied the place of furniture, that huge Asplenium Nidus placed in the center of the living room. Her stones, books and mirrors. The magnificent velvety armchair located under the pergola of light. That thousand-leaf window that anticipated a garden of figs The pool and its colors. And the extension of the house with adjoining land whose trees, trunks and hammocks hid the great treasure of the place the workshop of the artist.
Eloisa's workspace had a very exceptional aura, Its glass box format made everything that happened around strikes directly in his works the clouds, the full moon, the song of the birds. I remember seeing the moon through the glass walls and then its acrylics illuminated by the twelve o'clock fireworks. Having met that space without Eloisa explaining her work, generated in me a genuine perception her wark would have appeared on my journey in the same way that the artist did months later when summoning me to write this text. Again, I wandered until i faced the great apparition. On the 31st at night, while I was carrying out my expedition, a large canvas of the face of a beautiful woman caught my attention. The protagonist carried a postmodern beauty almost out of a catwalk Chanel bushy eyebrows, prominent lips. I envisioned her leading a healthy life, connected with repairing environmental damage. However, something happened. His worried eyes diverted my gaze to another side of the painting. I no longer enjoyed the beauty of the protagonist. Now I was worried about his parted fips. What are you looking at? I discovered that his nose was missing. I got anxious What do you do? I had been looking at the work for half an hour but my attention was no longer on the painted but on what surrounded it. Then, as to whom a revealed truth falls, I understood that what had throbbing me was not the presence of what was there but the absence of what was missing.
The works presented by Eloisa in the exhibition Horror Vacui exhibit recognizable scenarios in the advertising wanna-be pools with lustful models, elegant costumes with eternal hairs, collection cars in some location of LA and a familiar scene of a father and a son under the heat of spring. They could be photos found in albums, travel memories or happy memories of moments lived. However, the focus is on empty spaces, Implanted with ffffsuspicion by the artist. It is not incompleteness but a speculated void. The intension of the target is there and the images coexist with those voids. But now, the meaning of the work another and that which is not required to reinterpret its content. The characters are the same always but this time they are mare human they have absences and, like outside of art, that disturbs. But what does it mean to be disturbed?
I think that being disturbed has to do with the alteration of the order of everyday life and then I imagine its repercussion in three stages one emotional, one analytical and one spiritual. The emotional impact appears when an absence is perceived what existed before now Is no longer there and does not belong to me anymore. It is a harrowing stage but, after all, it defines me as human. Then there, when I already identified the emptiness, I can pass an analytical stage. Now I accept the absence but this time understanding that my identity is built from that which is not I am what I am without that and that absence will accompany me forever. Finally, the last stage has to do with the evolution of that void, with what I will do with it: I already distinguished the absence and I affirmed myself to leave and with it, but now with wisdom and self-knowledge i transform it into learning. Ino longer fight against emptiness because I see it as an essential part of an organic whole.
So, being disturbed is it positive? I think about the artists and the ability they have to disturb through their works. However, to disturb they have to go through their fears every time they come across a sheet, canvas or empty wood. And still, it is possible that they face fear and do not achieve consequences in those who appreciate their works The number of times a work left me thinking for weeks is innumerable, but without doubting there are many more that were insignificant to me. So artists have a double challenge. With this exhibition Eloisa has net only managed to overcome her fear of emptiness, but also that she has invited me to stop my walking machine and has called me to a very deep reflection. The appearance of Eloisa, like that of the tumor manifested my own fear of emptiness. But now I understand that there is no way to escape him. Maybe its time to stop wanting everything, to understand, as Eloisa did, that everything resides in the nothing.
Ailin Staicos
11/06/2018
