(Or Why does The White Rabbit Flee?)
There is no foolproof cure for curiosity. Humans have been blessed with the gift of doubt, to delve into ancient primal unknowns whose truth lies in recesses of historical memory. Delicate processes have placed man in a privileged place where reality is subject to change: matter-a primordial substance of all things is and will be essentially ephemeral. Man himself has entered into an evolutionary trance which takes several million years. This particularity offers an interesting quest for answers to such invasive metamorphosis pervading, transforming, strengthening it.
The passage of time alters not only the reckless White Rabbit; he knows or suspects of the contested mere mortals transience. And he passes by, stirring us in his desperate late race challenge; we trickles down the rabbit hole and leaves no tracks. An opposite approach to the contemplative precipitation runs through the work by Adriana Arronte (Havana, 1980). This wise artist builds microcosm from the coherent hybridization of morphologies, where daily and universality are mixed in the most formal sublime lyricism: changing, emerging, and evolving. Capturing the moment of transit to unknown universes or states where nothing is static, it is a leading feature of Arronte solo exhibition at Villa Manuela Gallery.
Cambio de Estado (Change of State) from January to February, 2015 brings together several installative pieces which appropriate the gallery space without choking. Museology proposes a coherent dialogue between the viewer and this work facilitating the process of receiving the artistic message. Thus, we are given Coronas, reminding us of monarchical power -maybe- and bloody footprint which are often left after authoritarianism. However, such violent allusion contrasts with delicate provisions of vital fluid when hitting another surface, then camouflaging in impossible tissues where the iconographic imagery of Adriana Arronte is suspected: hearts, stars, branches, thorns.
Meanwhile, Deciduo (Deciduous) becomes a masterful exercise that symbolically sums up the way to a different state, the exact time of this change from dry leaves finely openwork into lace in a promise of brand new autumn.
It is about seeing the surrounding reality through more inquisitive and, why not? fanciful eyes. The quality of the materials selected reveals a deep investigation of this artist, as issuer of senses and sensibilities. She has used resins, alpaca, and porcelain for exploring the textual qualities of the material / the matter. Pieces such as Historia o Duelo reverse priori conceptions of intimate home world from operated crockery and utensils. This artist has endowed them with a new meaning; she has transformed them into other bodies and dignified them by her questing subjectivity.
It is worth mentioning the piece that gives name to this exhibition Cambio de estado. A swarm of snowy insects invade a dark corner of the wall taking over. The black-white color contrast in addition to visually attractiveness – expresses itself basic concepts: good-bad, life-death, heaven-hell, and light-dark, as an alternative to the struggle of opposing forces in nature. Moreover, it is an iconic event of transience and evolution of insect and its life changing cycles: egg- larva- pupa- imago, in inexorable mutation.
Adriana Arronte is interested in frizzing moments which might seem fleeting – forging them in the contained passion of the ephemeral. It seems to say with an enigmatic smile and softly: “No Hurry, White Rabbit, life goes underway whether or not you stop your quick march”…
Photo: Alain Cabrera
