Dacosta Gallery
Opening of Carolina Rocha’s exhibition
Se eu não posso tocar, posso ver? is the title of Carolina Rocha’s exhibition. This question shows us the importance this artist gives to touch. Let’s think about it. If I am not allowed to touch the object in front of me, if the very act of touching is forbidden, will I ever be able to capture it, perceive it… make it real?
The question encloses in itself the power of irony. In Carolina’s work, we find not only what is observable but what “exists”.Through this collection of pieces, she attempts to impress upon the spectator the extraordinary of movement. This idea is imparted through akróbatos (acrobat), which means walking on pointe. It is discreet and relatively quiet, but it leaves a trail that must be followed as the artist lets it flow until the beeswax in her moulds dries up. Through intuition, the dance separates natural substance from artificial substance – the pigment deposited upon the wax. The four resulting macro photographs become an x-ray of the drawings produced. Only through these photos, the artist’s reality can materialize itself. It allows the refocus of consciousness back toward every individual’s interior world.
It shows Art as an expression or experimentation of one’s singular reality. In the duration of this flux, reality most intimately shows itself. It is not the artist’s intent to represent vulnerable shapes, even if that seems to be the case. Through medium and technique, Carolina expresses singularity and guides the spectator as they also experience those singularities. In a way, this exhibition addresses all from which we abstract ourselves, all that separates, removes and retracts. Harmonies and acknowledgements do not appeal to her. Her attention is focused on the accident, which did not need to happen but did. A controlled accident, which does not allow itself a mortal wound. The piece does not die from the accident. On the contrary, the accident is the force from which the composition comes to live. Their accidental shape results from a relinquished chaos. The catastrophe generates rhythm; it becomes the genesis of intensity, of the sensations that live within the piece. It is potency/dynamism: the path to essence. Art struggles with chaos. This struggle turns chaos into vulnerability. The artist captures elements of this chaos in the wax’s mould or a drawing’s flickering photograph, which can be deduced from the running beeswax and the trembling hand. The slight deviation of the drawing’s photograph is itself the genesis of chaos. It is a directional choice by the artist, which also distances the piece from that which is taught, domesticated. Chaos as genesis conveys that there is something the artist puts into her work to start producing germinal lines. The artist aims to represent the differences in that which is small, the microscopic chaos that bubbles under that which is clearly visible. To the artist, this is the “real experience”.
To capture Art’s true essence, one must describe its process, so said Georg Simmel. The way Carolina creates this process can be characterized as genetic. It is through it that the piece’s genesis is captured, still sprouting. And it is through it that the piece’s maturation can be visualized.
Pedro Arrifano