ICUL CTION C o n t e m p o r a r y
A r t
Paula Ortega
R e v i e w
Winter 2016
'valuable' metals out of the ground for our pleasure. It's important to remark that the use of casein-based bioplastic is a crucial aspect of your practice: the reminder to its organic nature triggers the viewers' primordial parameters concerning our relation with physicality: as Gerhard Richter once remarked, "my concern is never art, but always what art can be used for": what is your opinion about the functional aspect of Art in the contemporary age?
Nowadays art seems to be very much about involvement with the public. Art is in itself a function. If it triggers emotions it works. If by functional you want it to whirr or to wear then perhaps that speaks of society's desire to own and display more than to enjoy. As you have remarked in your artist's statement, you draw inspiration from fractals and the unseen structures and patterns in our world – both created by nature and humankind. Your work seems to pursue an unconventional kind of harmony between an external and internal world: although your inspiration comes from abstract imagery, the result of you exploration your works could be considered as tactile biographies of the conflictual symbiosis between perception and imagination. As the late Franz West did in his installations, your Footprints Series shows unconventional aesthetics in the way it deconstructs perceptual images in order to assemble them in a collective imagery, urging the viewers to a process of self-reflection. Artists are always interested in probing to see what is beneath the surface: maybe one of the roles of an artist could be to reveal
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