Body/ Support 

1/6/1995

 

Printing as an action on a surface that can make its mark in other bodies is the core of Del Pilar’s work. In this exhibit, she brings to the audience two series of works that have in common the presence of her own body as a matrix-support, the changes it suffers along the process and the record of time. In both of them, she highlights in a literal sense the impressions that objects requires from her, the intrinsic reactions of her body to them as well as the conditions her skin and physical structure determine surfaces and other bodies in the outer world.

The titles that she names the first set of works allude directly to existing issues between the time and shapes. "Eight minutes," "Fifteen minutes" and "Twenty minutes" explain the time it takes to roll the brass wire around her. Carefully Del Pilar casts her fingers and hand to use them as molds and to search results that are not its most obvious transcription.

She handles the metal with care not to cause injury, but, following the fundamental physical law, inert matter acts in reaction to what is imposed to it, causing small blockages and color changes in the living matter. Her will to build it overcome the discomfort and the shape each volume absorbs depends on the time of pressure resistance. A mixture of hedging instrument and torture, the bizarre glove after put off, retains the hand’s memory just as the skin texture retains the metal marks.

The second group of work consists of small squared pieces of paper placed side by side by setting a subtle track, placed at the height of the observed eyes. These fragments emphasize the uniqueness, the acute sense and the banality of the unprepared gestures of everyday life. They call attention to the fingerprints not only as unique matrixes of revealing identity fingerprints, but also as perception channels of external reality and the inner world of communication. Such records, sometimes more determined, other times more tenuous, witness various orders and attitudes.

The artist discusses thus the traditional concepts of engraving making of the two hands the relations matrix/ hard proof, making it impossible the intention of drawing uniform and pushing the boundaries of graphic procedures. The orthography of everyday and in every day. Del Pilar uses the plastic object and the printed image as a metaphor of how she is impressed by the world and how she leaves a mark on it. She draws attention to the Franciscan notion that such marks thou modest and transient are unique, and calls for accountability for the changes they cause, even if they are small.

 

(Folder). Exhibition of Itaú Galeria in São Paulo; 1995

 

Maria Izabel Branco Ribeiro