Archipiélago

From every nation, from every province, from every island, gulf, accident, archipelago, oasis. From every piece of land or sea, they have usurped something and thus they formed me, condemning me to the eternal search for a place of origin.

–Alejandra Pizarnik

On the horizon, a couple of islands are glimpsed: a series of destinations where Utopia, as described by Thomas More, will be impassively sought, and which, due to their unusual nature, will provoke the emotional need to preserve the moments lived in photographs or small objects. Journeys through the archipelago allow us to find that, in each one of the islands, unique definitions and visions exist; that, while some coasts seem to touch, liquid borders permeate similar lands on the surface, but deeply different in their meaning. From afar, the image of the island becomes fertile ground for paradoxical analogies, such as perfection or abandonment, or the hope of touching land and the fear of facing the unknown. Thus, islets, islands, and archipelagos have been pretexts for reflection in literary, religious, and philosophical thought, allowing the exploration of motifs such as finitude, frontier, and identity.

Archipiélago is a collection of works that show how each element becomes a symbol of the ontological discoveries of life. One after another, the works present themselves as islands of meaning, both for the artists and the viewers, who confront images that may not have been part of their visual archive but are familiar in the deepest layers of understanding. Thus, each artwork enables a dialogue to find something of one’s own, something we have perhaps overlooked but now confronts us through materiality.

Curiosity, enjoyment, nostalgia, love, and resignation all have a place in the archipelago, which is also the title of John Isaacs’ sculpture (2018): a pair of bronze taps that stand in the immensity of the wall and are starting to rust, remaining ambiguously hieratic side by side. Like the gaze of the Argonauts (Sofía Bassi, 1969), ours travels through vast seas where impossible yet archetypal landscapes are constructed. With each nautical mile, the need to find the light of the aureus lighthouse that indicates the end of the journey (Gonzalo Lebrija, Faro, 2024) grows, and the curiosity that characterizes Jorge Méndez Blake to find a promised and idyllic island in the earthly chaos of the contemporary world increases; thus, through Utopias, literary, pictorial, or architectural islands, the artist seeks to make his own, for a single instant, an impossible place, as Eleonore Koch did in her contemplations of the horizon and Elena del Rivero while capturing the spirituality of the cosmos in sheets of gold and palladium.

In the impatience of travel, the oceanic tones created in the complexity of layers of pigments and photographs of the surface of the body become a source (Donna Huanca, POLYESTYRENE AGUAS (OO,23) #1, 2022) from which images of something not yet lived spring forth. Closeness is often perceived in the sobriety of black and blue ink strokes (Teresa Solar Abboud, Intraterrene, 2022), some other times, in a flood of colors that make one’s skin feel the pleasure of being outside the ordinary. Thus, Milena Muzquiz explores the playful milestones of life (American Spirits, 2020), while Gonzalo Lebrija glimpses that those moments happened, suspending time just at the moment the adventurous fever ends (Fever, 2002).

At sunset, memory takes hold of objects that can recreate connections with the islands – both terrestrial and symbolic – that are left behind. The history of inhabited lands is kept in ceramics (Asunción Molinos Gordo, ¡Cuánto río allá arriba!, 2021), while black plastic becomes a curtain of memory that allows us to see the sunset (Sara Ramo Black plastic becomes a curtain of memory that allows us to see the sunset (Sara Ramo, Portal ll: paisagem para horizontes, 2022) and in a blink, it is clear time passes and days, like journeys, end. In twilight, the islands of reminiscence will make it possible to rethink and relive and encounter our origins in the landscapes of archipelagos, utopias, and deep oceans.

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Donna Huanca
John Isaacs
Eleonore Koch
Jorge Méndez Blake
Gonzalo Lebrija
Milena Muzquiz
Elena del Rivero
Sofía Bassi
Sara Ramo
Asunción Molinos Gordo
Teresa Solar Abboud