María Lightowler

Yellow self-portrait is a small format work. An entanglement of pictures from different places and times with various elements intervening: ink, oil pastel, acrylic and burin. At times I see that all these fragments, in which prevails circular forms, are strength together through a transparent wire thread, very thin and weak. However, the work is compact and moves together. It is my self-portrait. It's my image within my image. That is, my portrait in a world shaped by forms that repeatedly come to me since I was a kid, in a dream like state, and on which I’ve been working for over a year in the series “a moment before sleep”. This is an image with circular shapes that moves sometimes fast, sometimes slowly, dense or mild, in harmony or denoting an unsolvable problem. An indescribable image, unclear and vague. I use photographs taken by myself, sometimes as support for the work, and some others as textures and wefts in the collages that I complete manually with crayons, pastels, ink and acrylics. In other cases, I appeal to scans and reprints on which I work afterwards. At times the work becomes almost an object. Has a body. I choose “yellow self portrait” because it is a paradigmatic work and contains the basis of the work “a moment before sleep”. It Tries to get to an unknown place, describes something that is not well known, repeats a sound that has only be heard once, describes an object that has just been seen in the dark. Translates an ambiguous concept.

I would prefer to induce and suggest. Inducing to a closer look, to see the materiality of the work, the textures and colors, discovering the invisible threads that run through it. Michel de Certeau suggests that "each work is habitable in the manner of a rented apartment”. I like this idea because what I am trying to do is to make available to the viewer various elements that he would later articulate to create his own visions, departing from a structure that has been a priori proposed.

I guess my work could be included into the pictorial tradition, understanding the painting as a mode of discourse and not as a technique or trade. However, I consider this as a transitional membership. I rather think that I can move freely from one place to another. As for my references: Leon Ferrari, Felipe Noé, Alberto Greco, Fabian Marcaccio, abot George, Nan Goldin, Liliana Porter, Pipilotti Rist, Nan Goldin, Guillermo Ueno, Francis Bacon, Hernan Marina, Ana Gallardo, Matilde Marín, Mariano Sardón , Remo Bianchedi, Mónica Girón, Mark Manders, Francis Alÿs, Luis Camnitzer, Daniel Ontiveros, Miguel Rothschild, Marcos Lopez, Dan Graham, Rineke Dijkstra ...

Ezeiza Paintant of Fabian Marcaccio exhibited at Malba is to me one of the most significant works that I've seen lately. Marcaccio talks about PAINTING. I think he awake among many of us a sort of re enchantment, a reconciliation, creating new conditions to open the game for a new conception of painting. It had been a long time that I hadn’t felt the pleasure of the skin, to go hand in hand with each stroke, …journey and experience, which incorporates digital and structural elements without altering its pictorial essence, rather exalting it. Something similar could be said about Juan José Cambre’s showing at the new space Wussman. A small exhibition but tremendously forceful. A journey through which I was immersed in the work as if I were falling into a very deep basement, and I stayed there, floating in the infinity of colors suggested by the artist.