“3 DE PLYCEM, 2 DE CLAVOS Y 1 TABLÓN: CAOS Y EROS”

For more than a decade, the production of Diana de Solares has followed a very specific methodology. The process begins with the attention and care that the artist places on the world of things, mainly on those objects that are considered mundane, as waste or in disuse. Chance and a particular perceptual relationship cause some of these to be selected and accumulated in her study. There, they wait for the moment when they will be reformed and linked by de Solares as part of her original production.

Discarded pieces of wooden formwork, common industrial materials (such as MDF), found rods and wires, organic elements, among other objects, acquire a second life in her work. De Solares ponders the links between them and assembles them according to a geometric and constructive order. What was considered waste is transformed into a coherent system of relationships between bodies and volumes. The artist also resorts to the application of color, using a palette inspired by daily life: coming from the decorations of the facades of houses and the bodies of buses, merchandise and commercial fashions. De Solares applies these strategies in order to counteract one of the most critical issues related to the legacy of abstraction during the 20th century: its emancipation from reality. Faced with this question, de Solares's work seeks proximity, through her materials and colors, as well as the links she establishes with that broader cultural context. In this way, her abstract solutions seek closeness and appeal to a new relationship with the viewer through its material presence, its shape and color. The title of this exhibition has to do with this disposition and intention of her work.

De Solares reconfigures a chaos of mundane things under that particular geometric order. Her formal solutions are outstanding and, without a doubt, dialogue with and nourish the legacy of geometric abstraction in Guatemala. This geometric order that de Solares articulates is not limited to the formal aspect. Her production seems to give rise to understanding it, also, symbolically. Geometry as a repository of possible meanings. For decades, de Solares kept magazines that she has used, this time, to cut hundreds of small triangles of paper printed in different colors. With these she has formed four circles in the manner of a collage – a practice twinned with the assembly present in her sculptures and reliefs. These large-scale collages, on display together in one gallery room, resemble planets photographed from space; they are a set of circles that with their particular symbolism can evoke images of the celestial vault or be related to a sacred geometry. This big bang of small cutouts that give rise to four geometric bodies can also be understood in reference to topics of interest to the artist, such as the relationship between the concepts of Chaos and Eros, which appears as a subtitle of her exhibition. The meticulous workmanship of these pieces captures the attention and whoever observes them finds himself in the midst of this universe – something that reveals the centrality of the participation and perception of the viewer in the artist's works and installations.

This issue is most noticeable in the main gallery space. Diana de Solares' exhibitions operate as a staging that seeks to create new relationships and understandings between material bodies and human bodies. On this occasion, Unus Mundus is the central piece of the spatial scene that she has articulated: a sculpture determined by an accumulation of materials, mainly wood, contained by a triangular steel structural frame. In this piece, the triangle can evoke a symbolic geometric order coming from nature, as could happen with the presence of a volcano. Around this piece, there are several wall assemblies as well as other three-dimensional pieces. Inside the gallery, for example, a garden unfolds with shapes never seen before, made with fragments of everyday life. A set of sculptures in the form of totems have a presence as if they populated this scene, establishing a relationship with the reliefs on the wall. Shapes, bodies and a plethora of connections between them are concretized from an endless number of common objects. Thus, Solares' work confirms what the Czech philosopher Dalibor Vesely said: "it is encouraging to discover that behind the silence of isolated fragments there is a potential world of communication that can be, under certain conditions, articulated and revitalized." It is also a reflection of the artist's interest in the relationship between Chaos and Eros: between an abstract principle that is the source of all creation and the creative impulse that gives rise to it.

Daniel Garza Usabiaga

Curators: Daniel Garza Usabiaga and Josseline Pinto

Photography by José Oquendo