Space is the Place

NUEVA YORK, JADITE GALLERIES - AÑO 2005.

  
Francisca Blázquez's most recent body of work, a group if paintings subtitled Dimensionalismo, draws from several populist sources; spaces might be the more correct term. Blázquez has borrowed the indeterminate and fractured cyberspace of the Internet and the pre-packaged "Outer Space" of classic science fiction films, such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Solaris. Within these moving pictures, a purely artificial visual dimension exists, expanding at a glacial pace and climaxing in transcendental spiritualism. The cosmic visual projections of Francisca Blázquez, her not-so-still-lifes, have a very similar aesthetic effect. 
  
The Dimensionalismo paintings have been projected from the artist's inner atmosphere, but with her odd shapes and patterns and clashing color combinations, Blázquez reflects on some very earthly concerns. She explores the classic paradigm of body/mind duality reinvented for the Age of Information.
   
Blázquez's art world influences can be most easily located in the early neo-concrete experiments of Lygia Clark and Equipo 57. Clark's groundbreaking geometric sculptures "demanded the spectator's manipulation to yield their organic meaning." These works, in turn, yielded their creator, sending her into deep philosophical speculation on the emergence of new technologies and aesthetics. Meanwhile, the Spanish team Equipo 57, with their "laboratory of ideas," radically researched the second and third dimensions through painting, sculpture and furniture design, pushing life and art toward a total convergence. Half a century later, Blázquez is attempting to pick up these experiments where they were left off, incorporating ancient forms of artistic communication, like dance, with more current computer-based graphics. 
   
Though I'm uncertain of Ms. Blázquez's musical influences, might I suggest the free jazz of Sun Ra as a soundtrack for the creation of Dimensionalismo. Space is the place indeed for artists who inhabit a post-religious world but still yearn for a spiritual dimension. 
   

           
Mark Dagley

Artista plástico estadounidense