KARINA
ZOTHNER
DIALOGS
KARINA ZOTHNER / JAVIER MACHIMBARRENA
21_Dec 2018.
Photography / Sculpture. PERFORMANCE
Within the framework of JM's individual exhibition "A la Luz del Sur" the 6th Dialogue of the tightrope walker will take place;
a photograph belonging to the unpublished project ERODED EARTH. RESILIENCE and a painting by Javier Machimbarrena belonging to the series Locations and shelters
You must treat the Earth well, it was not given to you by your parents, it was lent to you by your children .
kikuyu proverb
THE FERTILE VOID
I met Javier relatively recently, passing through common spaces, coinciding in art spaces. He soon told me about his ideas for dialogues, about his intentions to bring together and put so many artists in contact. I found your overview very interesting. Shortly after, I was lucky enough to attend a solo show of his at the artistic space of Nando Argüelles, El Coleta 1956, in Algeciras. That day I was able to begin to learn a little more about the multidisciplinary phenomenon of Javier Machimbarrena; works that came with him from his land and others carried out here, in the south, in these last two years; painting, sculpture, installation… I saw a piece, a painting, it resonated with me because I had already seen it published on the networks, but now I saw it "live". And I knew that I wanted to "dialogue" with this work.
The character of my work is open, mutable, alive and in continuous transformation. I am assembling projects and ideas, sometimes the dividing line that separates one from another is lost.
The work I have chosen for this dialogue is part of my latest project; "ERODED EARTH. RESILIENCE" in which I have been working for more than a year and it is still unpublished. Articulated as a multidisciplinary project, it encompasses painting, photography, video and performance. I feel more comfortable and find it more coherent to open the range of expressive possibilities to various different supports, times and rhythms on a common conceptual basis.
I feel a mixture of fascination and curiosity about the behavior of the human species understood from its most animal perspective. Animal versus culture, instincts versus education. Everything makes me think of constant clashes of opposing forces. Everything makes me imagine animals metaphorically corseted inside suits that do not allow them to Be, that do not allow them to breathe...
"ERODED EARTH. RESILIENCE" is a metaphor for the seasonal journey of the human being and its record. It speaks of movement and evolution, of dynamism and discovery. There is a certain tearing and breaking. There is also hope.
In my work I deal with the dissociated situation, from within and from without, from without as a human being that modifies the environment and from within as Nature that absorbs and returns this modification. I position myself on both sides, the creator of the imprint and the Earth that integrates the imprint, since being part of it, I am She.
The piece selected for this dialogue, a large format photograph, is part of what I have called Seasonal Tour; a long-range journey through different systems, in which I carry out a physical, spiritual and conceptual immersion; plain, valley, river, mountain. Sand, earth, silt, clay, stone. Each enclave has its own registry. Each material emits its own sound, a unique and different song.
In opposition to and as a complement to Javier's barren and empty space in his work "Locations", in this large-format image I show myself as an apparition in modified nature, in nature reordered and distributed. A contrast between the perfect rectangular shapes perfectly aligned on the great plain. I am supplanting one of them, man modifies and man wants, once again, to be Nature. Thus, a "transmigration" of identities is produced in which, supposedly losing the limits that define me, I link myself to a land, in this case, "natural" and at the same time artificially constructed. The link that unites the two works is silence, empty silence and full silence.
The open and mutable nature of the work has allowed that what was initially a dialogue between two works and two artists, turned into a dialogue between three works and three artists, one of them in "off" and that the third work was a sculpture-installation that was made "in situ" in a performance session under the title EL VACÍO FERTIL (read more 1 -2) with Javier Machimbarrena, sculpture-installation , Damián Gálvez, soundscape and Karina Zothner, action painting - installation.
Karina Zothner RATE 21_11_2018