Obra Recent

Silvia Gubern

23/01/92. (Sala 135)

From 23 January until 15 February 1992

A new exhibition of Silvia Gubern. In this case, a single painting on glass presided over the room, around the subtle sculptures on glass, feathers, wires, cords, etc., and drawings embroidered on linen fabric. 

The incorporation of embroidered drawings on linen links and connects with indigenous cultures and their artistic expression by women, through the use of textile and natural materials.

SILVIA, SAVIA

Sílvia Gubern does not look she sees. Does not search, she finds. Neither does she remember, she forgets. And she stops, still, contemplating what her eyes see, what her imagination is made up of, what her thoughts combine, what her pencil configures, following a drifting mood which she happily accepts, dictated by a strange wisdom that eludes all the words and that does not conform to order nor syntax.

Silvia stops, stunned in front of her thoughts, which arise when her mind wanders. Seeing what is being thought she submerges negligently and without spirit, shapes and clarifies until a thought falls from somewhere from somewhere in the world, a place where everything is a paradox and all knowledge unattainable.

Silvia sees and knows herself in this absorbent and delicate thought that surprises us for its density and immediacy, its brevity and presence. Thoughts as with forgetfulness show her what can only be seen under allegorical forms configured by drawings: emblems of a reality rooted in dream and desire.

In desire and knowledge that the world has given us, lies the number of the puzzle, the key to the seven gates that guard the empty space. Emblems of evidence, fleeting and unattainable, which so often tempts us and only desire can hold, and that only in dreams are called.

Emblems of evanescent certainty that only pens can fix, on the other side of the glass, or the mirror.

Mirrors, embroidery, like mild reminiscences that escape when the eye wants to hold them back. Mirrors that are like tiny lights perforate the body, the place or the place where dreams lie… Embroided like black holes that lead to the other side of the shade where thoughts are set free from the need of order and the love for words. Mirrors like reflections of unthinkable order, but true.

True because she has seen them, the whirlpools of sadness where Silvia often sinks. A glass lies at the bottom and shines like a star. Convulsions of emotion, perplexity and wreck are felt. These are all forms that moderate adventure, the degree of anxiety and tension.

Forms that don’t remember anything, that have no identity, no name. Neither are they formal cadences. They are a form of thought that stimulate the retina, that push the mind beyond infinity, beyond the space that surrounds them. Forms of imagination born of forgetfulness, long before the memories and the passing of the hours.

She sees what she thinks. What she paints. Where is that which she unfolds in her thoughts when painting? Is it that she knows what she knows because of what she does and paints? Is what she paints the forgetfulness of the hand and mind? Is the hand like the mind and the mind like the eye? Does the eye paint the forgotten things of the mind, the memories left in our hands or the glance which is converted into thought?

It’s the joke of the world, the bolt from the blue. Who knows no order can please the mind. It’s a teasing pain. Know that all is forgotten, even the name.

Antoni Marí