Some mercy in Irony
(on serie Paradise Lost)
By Miguel de la Cruz
The characters in these paintings conform a family
of contents understood under two meanings: contents (contenidos in Spanish)
in the sense of argumentations and fundaments and at the same time they
are restrained (contenidos in Spanish) as subjects incapable of expressing
feelings and emotions. We also say that they "conform a family"
because they are related to each other by common patterns, as their features
or their character and because of the frontal location, as in family portraits,
in which they are presented but overall they share a confinement situation
that suggests certain history, a genesis and this is what it is intended
to be meant with the title of this series "Paradise Lost".I
think we talk about history because Silvia has told us a version of some
facts. That who does not know just looks at similar images in which it
is easy to see a series, although deciphering them by the title could
be a little harder and the names of the works could result even more foreign.
It is not enough to see, it is needed to ask oneself what lies behind,
the characters themselves are asking for this, what happened to them?
Why do they look so compressed? The only certain thing about a "
lost paradise" is the story about a golden age that, as it is known,
at the end becomes one of fall and punishment for disobeying certain law
and believing that paradises exist and that they are not artificial.
Of this paradise we only see that which is lost, a caricature if you want,
even more if we take on account Silvia's words: "I introduce humor
when remembering "Form and content are one for each other in this
series. Since the beginning Silvia has hesitated between figurative and
abstract painting, her painting is generated from layers of dark colors
to lighter ones and contrasts - for instance from red to green- they enhance
those whites from the bone textures, whitewashed, woven. This style feature
here becomes more powerful, because it is related with this story. On
one hand, the structure, the darkness of the background and on the other,
the pigeonholing of the main characters enwrapped or surrounded of whites
that trap them as a shroud that symbolizes absence. That which is in blank,
without memory. Silvia evokes the word plot with her work. Plot as cheating
someone's trust who repeats to him/herself a story until he/she believes
it; it is a lie that is paid with the impossibility of giving oneself
to other. As an example, a painting named "El Abrazo" (The Hug)
is enough, the gesture of hugging is represented with a zigzag of ties,
the portrait of which show a mummified verticality.
But the personal limits of this story are transcended by the desire of
the artist when saying: "where does freedom of thought ends when
each one performs a role without assuming the hidden truth? "
Silvia continues thinking: " the dangers of fiction…" Yes,
there are fictions that keep people in deceit. Until one day truth bursts
in catastrophe and then- or sometimes- art and time make history more
intense than in actual facts, perhaps because they give it some allure,
some faith, some mercy in irony.
Miguel de la Cruz
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