Material biography

 Material Biography: Certain Tamara arroyo Drawings and Installations

©By Abdel Hernandez San Juan

Conceived, written and composed in 

English by Abdel Hernandez San Juan

Short Introduction 

  One of the main epistemes defined the avant-garde turn, that one of novelty –or the new--on the background of tradition, started with a substitution. Instead of mimetizing reality and or nature by illusions of its representations, meaning images which created the illusion of reality in representation a work of art should be open out to representing the perception of reality, instead of a perceived reality, the attention should be turned to perceptive perception itself. Impressionism started from there. 

  But as soon as turning to perceptive perception itself stablished, we discovered how a referential illusion stay yet at perception itself, even when we are now probably already not or less in front of represented, reference or denoted reality, the work still continues working between perception and reality or through perception in regard to the real.  

  In fact, the kid in question was not as much one about how the images of the referent effects at perception, but beyond that, perception as something itself.

  However, when perception moved to explore itself far to any referent, several paradoxes appeared. 

  On the one side, it was confined to a pure physical fact, the optical issue of the eye with its ocular figures and specular optical illusions. On the other side, if reference disappear or no longer work and perception stay with nothing to be perceived, it is confined to its own limits, if nothing is longer to be perceive, perception itself end to be diluted or death emplaced or replaced by aperptualism which evolves to be the inmediacy proximity of the body in the sensorial space ends substituted by abstraction. 

  On the first variable, a physical perceptive, optical pure, everything moved from special optical effects to “op art” and “cinetism”. On the second variable, a perception without nothing to be perceive but diluted at sensorial spaces immediacies, everything moved from subjectivity to fragments, (metonyms) and space proximity, (synesthesia’s). Instead of perception it derived in abstractionism, which claimed, like music did, nor only art dissolution through sprit and spiritual reality, but body abstractions of the senses in space, figures, surfaces, lines, geometries, backgrounds and analyses.  

Tamara Constancies: Toward an interstitial space Between the three ways

  Between both variables, however, a physical optical perceptive versus perception diluted in abstraction and subjectivity an additional one draws and appeared. Far to any descriptive referenciality, space proximity evolved to be also alive present inmediacy, it was then the body in space and a semantic memory of it, all moved then to be “materic art” and “body art”, reality appeared now as a collection of miniaturized clues the body cumulated in proximity. 

  The plastic work of Tamara Arroyo seems to be an exploration of new possibilities between such three variables getting original conjunctions and results in between. 

  Certainly, Beyond their differences, Op Artists and cinestists as well as abstractionist and materic Artists, they have all to work with form and matter and given that form and matter are nothing itself each one without the other, matter needing form to be matter and form matter to be form, only relations in between both stablish it including, of course, the structures and processes of such a relationship, and a work of art may be then created. 

  In fact Tamara has choiced to work with three concepts that no one of the three variables can’t elude, “Relations”, “structures” and “processes”. 

A Reticular Symbolism in front of the optical

  We are with Tamara art in front of an abstract reticular symbolisms of home, architecture and the urban something place her beyond cinetism given that reticula is not itself an optical effect control by an ocular illusion but a semantique film created with forms and plots interpose as a matter web between space and the visual. 

  As an objective form a reticular symbolize something between us and reality but not in the modes of something created between a perception perceiving and reference but as a glimpse of in between a materic web and spaces, it is like an unfolded texere (web) gives the impression of a glassened real whole. It is no the eye directly perceiving, but another Surface interposed and unfolded outside mediate between the eye and the ŵorld, it is a repetition that shows in front of the eye a way of seen extended in space as a reticulary form and matter, it offers a reading of seen, that eye itself can’t adventure, trip or journey.

  It is not then in Tamara Art neither the eye who perceives, neither a perceived image as two separated issues, neither the opposite like when perception and image unify as a real glassened, but an objective visual form space unforded and exteriorized outside, a symbolized plot proposes and or statement a way of seen, as a glimpse it evoques such a glassended image of reality. Instead of the eye gazing, such a reticular form extensión a physical gazing outsiding a visual Texere (web) free to symbolize, like tropes, but between matter and seen, it suggests an haz of relations discerns.

  Such an idea of an haz of relations discerns may be defined as major in Tamara art, through it, the artist weave like a weaver with fine minimalism, the plot or the web that texere and unify in her pieces the pure abstractions of forms, lines, surfaces, plots, matter and dots as relations of senses sinestesically communicating evoqued references. Reticulary symbolize seen but from a maximum spatial proximity disseminating the optical ocular and turning it to aptical and spatial sinesthesis, it is then the body relation with space and architecture, a visual symbolism retaining as a visible web the weave of a plot texere memory, relating visibles images with corporeal and spatial memory. 

Material Biography

  From such a way but not without majorly working with material biography resemantizations, she communicates a rich variety of senses, the immediate habitat, like the body relation with architecture, for example. Relations with immediate habitat such as home and domiciles spaces are here evoqued by simple structures sustained by foots suggesting through body and corporal memory things like tables, they are, however, at the same time, a same bidimensional plane extended as a free surface drawing in the space, something like a certain sinuous itinerary of a form in space tridimensionally abstract.

  Diluted any descriptive reference it also suggests to be then instead of home furniture’s and utensils, walls divisions in architecture, a wall separate’s an area from another one. 

  Its creative and inventive form and its letlee sides unfolds as a bidimensional symbolic form extensive in space an stuff that evoques a function, the functions of all that body collected clues alludes to home everyday life objects, elements, utensils and architectural functions, but that is however no longer a function, unprovided of it and resematized, suggesting by moments an ornamental design. I am thinking here about Structures IV, 2017

  Far to be denoted, reflected or represented references, the referential horizont appear here like semantique clues inscribed and transported in matter and form. It seems to be all about a semantique memory of form and matter seen from the body and I would like to define such a memory with the concept of material biography, a biography of the material itself, communicates resonances of urban memory.

  Her forms, for example, suggest a certain kind of modular structures fould and unfolds relatibly standards proliferated today at home with the designs of Ikea, a hollister corporative shopping mol, something called my attention since I see Structure IV and I late confirm seen her pieces Intervened Tender and her beautiful and subtly drawings on Ikea fabrics as well.

  This fact, her allusions semantically to city and urban resonances with drawing elements based in iron material and colors such as black, gold, red, polietileno and plastics relates her drawings and structures with forms to a certain point already fund in the social world. 

  This is something place her inside contemporary neoplasticism which as one of it main attentions explores the possibilities of an ultraneoplasticity, allusive to how polietineo as matter is today everywhere generalized in the modern consistency of the urban worlds materials as a way to also unsaturates plastics arts from the saturated situation textualism and intertextualism created consumed by postmodern figures as remedo, pastiches and parodies. 

  She creates symbolic figures that in the manner of home unfolded furniture’s but unprovided from it usual functions alludes to home and the architectural space, tenderer, oven, windows, plastic bags, home and offices curtains or Lattice windows like Venetian blinds. To her grand Tamara winner at Bilbao, for example, she recycled and created with plastic boxed collected at La Rivera Bilbao Markets, like a reticular tamiz or walls that funtioned as Lattice windows or Venetian blinds both made as an intervention there, at the Bibao Market and late explored to be bidimensional pieces on paper cutting the boxes and exploring the plastic plots potential of it to do both colour photography’s of it and collages, she also covered with glass plastic bags in a form that looks to be glassened ingravid presences suggesting or remaining the fast sensations of going to shop or doing market.

  A certain neoromaticism of the urban and of everyday life in our denses and big modern metropolis may be feel at Tamara art something that can be keep out as a major characteristic of our generation, making a sublime of the quotidian, apparently ordinary. 

  An interstitial and liminal move from the sensible beyond perception toward a return to contemplation is supposed to be pivotal here, it fares from the sign and icon prevalence postmodernism and pop art at the end of the past century even when certainly, while hardly seen and strongly resemantized from the subtly biography of the materials, an attention to the homogeneity of the standard culture of consume and mass culture is developed yet in Tamara art.

Confines of Neominimalism

  The neominimalism of Tamara drawings lines, relations and structures in processes suggest to maintain a certain ambiguity letting it open to viewers the fact that her pieces while being forms merged as expressions of her interior ŵorld, her being, soul and spiritual universe, also merged as something fund in the social world.

  What we are committed here to stand is about the confines of neominimalism. 

  While as plastic artist formed at fine and high art she works with fine minimalism as a weaver who weave her web and texere, she also procedure at certain pieces like an Ikea designer providing to some of her pieces the same kind of consistency, homogeneity and appearance. 

  She extension a plastic, visual and symbolic discourse that open the relation between art and design as a feel of explorations. This is something that keep her art to be a work of attitude and can be perceive in several of her more simples and beautiful geometric forms of iron like for example Relations 2016 or Structures II, the first one alluding to 13 windows pieces, the second one to ornamental iron forms inspired by collected images of houses iron ornamentals. 

  Utilitarian designers from corporate shopping’s mols as Ikea are creating today, certainly, useful and utilitarian modular standards forms relatibly like minimals and Tamara as a fine and high neominimalist artists is being reusing and resemantizing something of it to a certain subtly level letting it to be feel as clues through resemantizations of the materials biography. 

  Working with the inscribed semantique memory of matter she resematize extending the possibilities to create new senses and bring a new light on home, quotidians and the urban.

  In some of her recent pieces she has Projected, Tamara is reinventing in ways that similarly to my previous explained relation Between neominimalism and corporate shopping mol as Ikea, but this time toward a more extended concept of inventive visual culture, suggest now to be like how the culture of generalized consumer is being reinventing the quotidian, something currently happening nor only in architecture but at cucking and fashion aesthetics. I am thinking here about her piece 2 and 3, by now just project drawings of future pieces, when she is anticipating to do, inspired by iron ornamentals, additions of ceramic elements of colours and slabones of ceramics unprovided of its functions an appearance to be decoratives

Toward a Sensible Abstraction: Time, Space and Being between Lines, Surfaces and dots

  “Relations”, “structures” and “processes”, the concepts Tamara has choiced to work with, are themselves abstract concepts. 

  Sush a purity of abstraction realizes in Tamara through surfaces, lines and the dots that lines supposes and this is something relates her pieces with two main concepts, space and time.  

  On the one side a line supposes two extreme dots, the one started it and the one ending it as well as several dots in between, while a dot alone abstracted like the line in a Surface, stablishes a sense of a site or a place spatially seen, the one such a dot supposes to be.

  But as soon as a new dot appear a first imaginary line begging in between and from the moment the line start to move the dot of a now and the following dots of further now’s, transform it, like the line journey as well, in a dot of time, it turn then paradoxically to be now, the same dot and line, nor a place or a site, but the opposite, a non place and a non site. 

  Through this way Tamara pieces plays and suggest to be an exploration in between place and non place, site and unsite but seen as an space and time relation. 

  If the line free in surface a dot may be a place, but if there is no longer lines and dots in a surface, it is not space yet, instead it’s an infinite becoming of being in time, it is time, only when line and dots appears a surface turn to be space while only a surface transform, paradoxically, lines and dots in space, without a surface lines and dot are time.

   Tamara “processes” and “relations” needed of time and structures are formed by surfaces, lines and dots. All this is being clearly evoqued and suggested at her recent piece’s basis majorly in relations between lines and surfaces. Surfaces creates lines and lines dots, while lines and lines dots creates surfaces, a mutual production appear at this point as a self-production which may be seen also as a production of the self and it works as a symbolism of space and time.

  But given that it is impossible for time and space to be observed without contemplation and contemplation itself is a form of the sensibility, Tamara recent art can be read as a sensible abstractionism of space and time evoquing a being relations in processes abstracted in lines and surfaces, she is exploring the affective relational of forms. Her windows and colour pencil drawings explicit an abstractionism that remember Mondrian who from De stil proclaimed a dissolution of art in the spirit and spiritual reality.

Discussed Works

Tamara Arroyo, Structures IV, 2017, view of Promotora exhibit at Can Felipa gallery, 

black painted iron, variable sides

Tamara Arroyo, Structures IV, 2017, black painted iron, variable sides 

Tamara Arroyo, Intervened clothes, painted iron, from relations serie

2016 

Tamara Arroyo, Relations, 2016, Cutted Ikea Fabrics

Tamara Arroyo, Celocias, 2016, intervention made at the Bilbao Rivera market, deconstructed plastic market boxes

Tamara Arroyo, Relation’s 2016, expo Quotidian Geometries, Addaya Gallery, Centre d Art Contemporani, thirsting iron black, gold and bronze painted

Tamara Arroyo, Structures II, three black, gold and cobre painted iron pieces, Bilbao Art open doors, 2017 

Tamara Arroyo, Pieces 2, drawings inspired in ornaments from a variety of cerrajerías to add to it ceramic color elements

Tamara Arroyo, Pieces 3, ceramic pieces lost their functions transformed in decorative elements

Tamara Arroyo, Recreations of Plastic Bags, Made with glasses, Mava, The Glasses Museum of the Madrid Community

Tamara Arroyo, S/t, Seven color photography’s on Hahnemuler paper, 2016

Tamara Arroyo, S/t, Collage of plastic market boxes framed as bidimensional pieces, Exhibit the Interrupted Line: Tamara Arroyo and Jimena Kato, La Havana, 2017

References

Abdel Hernandez San Juan, The Liminals, paper, pp, Aesthetic and time, Selected Essays

Abdel Hernandez San Juan, The Interstitials, paper, pp, Aesthetic and Time, Selected Essays

Abdel Hernandez San Juan, Aesthetic and Time, Pp, Aesthetic and Time, Selected Essays

Abdel Hernandez San Juan, Hermeneutic and Axiology, paper, Pp, The Subject in Creativity, Book, Complete Works

Abdel Hernandez San Juan, The Anobjectual Object, paper, Pp, The Subject in Creativity, Book, Complete Works

Abdel Hernandez San Juan, The Crisalide of Being, paper, Pp, The Intramundane Horizont, Book, Complete Works

Jacques Derrida, La Forma y el Querer Decir, notas sobre la Fenomenología del Lenguaje: Hurssel, Catedra, 1989, Librero Privado 

Jacques Derrida, Form and Wishes to Say, notes on the phenomenology of language, The University of Chicago Press

Hegel, Forma y Materia, Pp, Ciencia de la Lógica, tomo II, Hachete

Hegel, Form and Matte, Pp, Science of Logic, tome II

Michael de Certaud, The Practice of Every Day Life, The University of California Press, 1999