VACD Speaker Series and Exhibition: Luciana Arslan
Luciana Arslan : Figure
The figure, according to the Houaiss dictionary, is a feminine
noun. The exterior form, external outlines of a body, graphic lines
which represent someone or something (real or imaginary), images which
accompany a text, envisioned forms, a symbol, an allegory, an idea.
The figure accompanies the artistic trajectory of Luciana Arslan.
Dense forms, engraves, material, composed of insistent lines,
sometimes, even 'dirty'. Graphic notes derived from thought processes
and the molding of sensations in forms, rude embroidery on light
fabric. Above all, the drawings are made up of images and vast 'empty'
spaces on the fragile Japanese paper, or fulfilled with paint and
arranged upon wooden fiber plates.
The hybridism of the images is striking. There is empathy and taste
for certain disconnected imaginary imagery: educational books, aimed at
women, Turkish prints and filigrees, anatomical diagrams and the
suitable movement of bodies for dancing. The fantastic, emerges in a
natural way, as if due to the state of the soul in a trance, or an
emotional, uncontrollable and continuous overflow.
At times, inevitable affinities come to mind: Leonilson, Frida
Kahlo, Louise Borgeois, and David Salle. That is natural for a
cosmopolitan artist. Strong references which helped to build original
repertoires and paradigms that intertwine in a contemporary rhizome and
composes layers of significant available and shuffled texts. It is
difficult to say whether a code can possibly be identified or if we are
dealing with the incommunicable and incomprehensible.
What does Luciana wish to tell us? Would there be a strand of
logical discourse which would give us a hint of what her intentions
were? Would it be enough to reason about the complex condition of a
woman and her vital relations? We are facing a paradox between
ancestral culture and the post-modern cliché.
More than just making a statement, it is necessary to incite upon
perception. After all, we ought to dip the image into the liquidity of
reality, even though the one and only experience stems from the idea,
the known, and the memory. The dirtiness is crucial, because it
demonstrates that utopia is impossible. The silence, the emptiness and
the blank do not exist. But there is focus, the timbre and the form.
Summing up, there is a net of lines, which bind the bodies, the
entrails and the figures. The flow may well be the key: the smudge
which spreads and devours everything in its surroundings. The arabesque
and the spiral of the ornament are hooks to trap, as well as the fur,
hair and skeins. But the vomit, blood, viscose and sticky excretes,
although in a repulsive state, portray their share of seduction.
In this entanglement, the significance can only be synthesized.
There ought to be no diachronic or linear readings, nor should any
pre-judgments be made. Rather contemplation and enjoyment and let the
figures prevail.
Marco Pasqualini de Andrade
PHd in Art History
(Translated by Ruy Barreto)