Author: Isabel Cisneros

Embebidas: hacia una suspensión de la metamorfosis

| Isabel Cisneros

Lorena González, 2009

En un papel de tres pies cuadrados, la parte (visiblemente) pintada no ocupa más de un tercio. En el resto del papel, parece que no hubiera imágenes; y sin embargo, las imágenes tienen allí una existencia eminente. Así, el vacío no es la nada. El vacío, es el cuadro.
CHANG SHIH
Antiguamente, en la práctica general de la pintura china, la ausencia del claroscuro a la hora de otorgar verosimilitud a las formas se debe a que la sombra debe estar incluida en el gesto mismo de la pintura, en la acción del artista en el momento de pintar. François Cheng en su libro Vacío y Plenitud aclara que la acción pincel-tinta constituye uno de los puntos fundamentales de la pintura oriental, la pincelada es el ejercicio activo del espíritu, la transferencia del movimiento de la vida y la muerte en el ánimo del cuadro, siendo el negro de la tinta y el movimiento del pincel, junto a la consciencia del desenvolvimiento orgánico del mundo, el conjunto de acontecimientos necesarios para que en el cuadro puedan revelarse todas las gamas, todas las formas, todos los volúmenes y todo el proceder de los diez mil seres y las diez mil cosas.
Actualmente, el pensamiento en torno al desarrollo que en las últimas tres décadas ha tenido el arte conceptual, se encuentra muy cerca de estas consideraciones filosóficas que rodearon durante tantos siglos el desarrollo de la pintura oriental. El proceder de tendencias como el minimalismo, e incluso de prácticas relacionadas con movimientos como el cinetismo, tienen su hilo conductor justamente en la disminución de los recursos dentro del ejercicio artístico, para, a través de la idea y de las diversas estructuraciones seriales y/o depurativas de la misma, revelar el desplazamiento de un ánima propia y subyacente, inmanente al desenvolvimiento de los seres y distanciada de la grandilocuencia representativa tan propia del arte occidental y de la cultura visual contemporánea.
La obra reciente de Isabel Cisneros, respira al alimón de estas consideraciones, tan distantes en el tiempo y en el espacio como cercanas en la acción que internamente las moviliza. Con el título Embebidas, Cisneros ha reunido un inquietante cuerpo de trabajo, donde los procesos del ejercicio cerámico le han servido para engranar una suerte de nuevas especies representativas, pequeños gestos volumétricos que desprendidos de la acumulación serial-reflexiva de sus propuestas anteriores, se han dirigido hacia la suspensión de sus propias metamorfosis formales. A través de un largo proceso depurativo, la artista parte del engranaje de módulos textiles diversos, realizando la labor del tejido previamente a la de la quema. Posteriormente, estos tejidos son enlazados en una forma definitiva, la cual es sellada a través de la inmersión de las mismas en barbotina de porcelana. Luego, colocadas en rejillas, las piezas son bañadas una y otra vez o repintadas con un pincel muy cargado. Mientras se van secando, el proceso continúa por varios días en la limpieza del goteo, las pinceladas y las burbujas, hasta que adquieren una consistencia más firme que permite insertarlas en varias quemas a distintas temperaturas.
El resultado final deviene en un conjunto de formas tan presentes como ausentes donde la agitación del tejido ha quedado parcialmente detenida, volúmenes cuyo referente ha sido absorbido por el proceso mismo de elaboración. En cada pieza, el movimiento del material, su desplazamiento, su flexibilidad, su colorido y su ánima han sido asimilados por su propia invisibilidad, para fusionarse y revelarse en una apariencia distinta e inversa, parcialmente velada pero materialmente contentiva del dinamismo vital del referente oculto.
En este sentido, la obra reciente de Isabel Cisneros comporta varios de los lineamientos desarrollados en este texto: de las estrategias del arte conceptual, la artista amplía el uso de los procesos cerámicos para depurar e invertir problemáticas propias de los discursos de la representación, acción contemporánea con la que silencia, deconstruye y reinscribe el poder iconográfico y presencial de los elementos; del arte oriental, el solucionar las oposiciones vacío-lleno, luz-oscuridad, visible-invisible, no por la confrontación entre los pares, sino por la integración sutil de cada dupla; una suspensión reveladora del estado efímero de los materiales (cuerpos textiles, cuerpos acuosos, cuerpos evaporados, cuerpos volumétricos) que no sólo remite a un conjunto de metamorfosis propias de los procesos naturales y humanos, sino a la matriz interna de cadenas de sobrevivencia, de transformaciones y representaciones, de tensiones vitales en donde todos nos encontramos circular e inevitablemente inscritos.

Embebidas: towards a suspension of metamorphosis

On a three squared foot sheet of paper, the part which is (visibly) painted does not take up more than a third of the space. On the rest of the paper there do not seem to be any images; and nevertheless, the images all have a striking existence there. So, empty space is not nothingness. Empty space is the picture.
CHANG SHIH
In the Chinese painting of olden times, the absence of chiaroscuro, which makes forms appear life-like, is explained by the fact that shadow must be included in the very act of painting, in the artist’s movement as he paints. In his book Emptiness and Fullness François Cheng explains that the action of brush and ink is one of the fundamental elements of Oriental painting, that the brushstroke is the active exercise of the spirit, the transfer of the movement of life and death onto the painting’s own mood, where the black of the ink, the movement of the paintbrush and an awareness of the world’s organic development are the necessary combination of elements so that all shades, all forms, all volumes and the behaviour of the ten thousand beings and ten thousand things can be seen in the painting.
Nowadays, the ideas that have emerged about the development of Conceptual art over the last thirty years are very close to these philosophical musings, which surrounded Oriental painting throughout centuries. The use of styles such as Minimalism, and even movement-related practices, like Kinetic art, trace precisely back to the reduction of resources deployed within art with the aim of using the idea, and the various serial forms and/or refinements of it, to reveal the displacement of its own underlying spirit, which is inherent in the development of beings and far removed from the grandiloquent representations so typical of Western art and of contemporary visual culture.
Isabel Cisneros’ recent work is in tune with these ideas, which are as distant in time and space as they are interrelated in the way their inner mechanisms work. With the title Embebidas (which refers to the a process of soaking where one thing absorbs another), Cisneros has brought together an uneasy body of work in which she has used pottery techniques to combine what might be considered new forms of representation – minimal volumetric gestures which when separated from the serial-reflexive accumulation of her earlier works have shifted toward a suspension of their own formal metamorphoses. Through a long process of refinement, the artist’s work is based on the combination of different fabric modules, where the weaving element takes place before the material goes into the kiln. These weavings are subsequently brought together in a final form which is sealed when it is dunked into porcelain barbotine. After that, the pieces are placed on grilles and bathed repeatedly then repainted with a heavily loaded brush. As they dry, the process continues for several days whilst the dripping, brushstrokes and bubbles are cleaned off until they attain a firmer consistency that allows them to be inserted into various kilns at different temperatures.
The final result is a group of forms which are present and absent in equal measures, in which the movement of the weave has been partially curbed and where there are volumes whose referent has been absorbed by their very process of elaboration. In each piece the movement of the material, its displacement, its flexibility, its colour and spirit have been assimilated by their own invisibility, so as to fuse these elements together and show their changed and inverse appearance, so that each piece is partially covered but is materially constituted by the vital dynamism of the hidden referent. I
n this sense, Isabel Cisneros’ recent work involves several of the ideas developed in this text: the artist broadens the use of pottery processes within the strategies of Conceptual art to refine or invert some of the issues concerning discourses of representation, a contemporary action which is used to silence, deconstruct and reinscribe the power of iconography and presence of the elements. She uses Oriental art, solving the opposites of empty-full, light-dark, visible-invisible by subtly integrating rather than confronting each duo and there is a telling suspension of the ephemeral state of materials (textiles, liquids, evaporated matter, volumes) which not only recalls a group of metamorphoses which are part of natural and human processes but also the inner mold of chains of survival, transformations and representations, of vital tensions in which we all find ourselves inscribed in a circular and inevitable form.

Acumulaciones

| Isabel Cisneros

Un intercambio de materiales y técnicas de tejido entre Vicente Antonorsi y yo. 

An exchange of materials and knotting techniques between Vincente Antonorsi and myself.

Vicente Antonorsi e Isabel Cisneros. Acumulaciones.

| Isabel Cisneros

Vicente Antonorsi e Isabel Cisneros.

Por Susana Benko. Art Nexus, # 66, Volumen 6, Pags. 141-2, septiembre-noviembre 2007

Some time ago, Vicente Antonorsi and Isabel Cisneros, visual artists with established careers in Venezuela, shared a vision of aggregating their individual experiences in order to experiment with and enrich their creative processes. They recognized their common ground: an almost sensual pleasure in matter and working with the accumulation and assemblage of small elements to generate two- or three-dimensional shapes. Under the guidance of the curator Miguel Miguel, this formal dialogue resulted in an exhibition titled ¿Acumulaciones, Diálogos Visuales: Vicente Antonorsi / Isabel Cisneros,¿ which was presented at Trasnocho Arte Contacto. 
Antonorsi is an architect, visual artist, and designer. He is intimately familiar with wood, on which he bases his impeccably designed furniture. His shapes also refer to primordial forms. Cisneros had her beginnings in ceramics, a medium she continues to use as she explores its potential in the field of sculpture. For this, she employs weaving and the assemblage of serialized elements created in clay. For their experiment, each artist became involved in the materials used by the other: Antonorsi explored ceramics while Cisneros experimented with wood, seeds, coconut shells, buttons, etc. ¿Neither or us would have come up with some of these works alone in our studios,¿ said Cisneros in an interview with the local press, while Antonorsi acknowledged he had been greatly pleased to be able to create his work ¿with her materials.¿ 
Even though their empathy is intense-both are passionate about the natural and the organic-their creative processes are individual and autonomous. Antonorsi retains an almost symmetrical order in his works, while Cisneros tends toward structures that are flexible and irregular. Yet there were works in which the authorship was difficult to assess, because of the experience of adopting the other artist’s procedures. 
Nature gave them the material for their work. They transformed these materials without distorting their essences and were respectful of their original appearances: a seed was not posited as something other than a seed, and the sea shells or coconut shards never ceased being what they were. The transformation of matter came through the way that the artists handled the materials and through the accumulation of small elements that comprised the sculptural forms. Antonorsi’s works were solid and imposing in their volume; Cisneros’s resembled zoomorphic, highly organic shapes. Both worked with artisanal techniques, such as the way that beads are threaded to form a necklace. At the same time, the artists’ systems generated three-dimensional structures that were highly distilled and rational. In sum, these works were rigorously ordered and had been created with formal discipline. 
The accumulation and assemblage of small elements implied abundance, yet at the same time this resource became a synthetic language. Both artists used it. This was the show’s curatorial message, which expressed the synthesis at which the artists arrived through a visual dialogue that emerged from the formal propositions that unite them. 
Cisneros and Antonorsi appropriated the products of nature. They extracted nature’s formal richness, but this quality also promoted a sense of belonging from which Venezuelan viewers could not subtract themselves. These were earth works, from a nature that is ours and that defines our environment.

Accumulations, Visual Dialogues

| Isabel Cisneros
guillermo Barrios

Arte al Día International, # 120, p. 120-1, Aug-Sep 2007

Acumulaciones, diálogos visuales

A partir de una intensa fase de trabajo en conjunto, Isabel Cisneros y Vicente Antonorsi han hecho público un “diálogo visual” que se ha revelado a la vez enriquecedor y desafiante. Durante un tiempo que tuvo que ser extendido por el interés que generó, un contingente de más de ocho mil visitantes se ha hecho emocionado testigo – entre la admonición y la exaltación – de una aventura del arte canalizada por un ánimo de encuentro e interpretación de sentidos. Los programas creativos de ambos artistas, de inequívoco sello personal, se han retado a avanzar más allá de sus coincidencias de entrada: el trabajo con la triada nodo-módulo-fragmento y la reducción geométrica e interpretación lírica de formas naturales. 

El proyecto se ha planteado la destilación y la transfusión recíproca de elementos esenciales a partir del desgarramiento, la franca apertura de cada programa frente al otro. En este encuentro Antonorsi ha convocado a sus ensamblajes las táselas de gres, aunque no los adminículos industriales que Cisneros incorpora comúnmente en su obra, la cual, a su vez, se ha hecho permeable a la “materia viva” con los que aquél construye su imaginario. La muestra, bajo la cuidadosa mirada del curador Miguel Miguel, se ha planteado en torno a sus propósitos: el espectador inicia el itinerario flanqueado por ejercicios murales – las “extensiones” de una y los “canales” del otro – que juegan a desdibujar fronteras, para avanzar a sucesivas estaciones teñidas alternadamente por pulsaciones de fusión o afirmación de territorios. Al final, cuando han retomado el curso cotidiano de su trabajo, ambos artistas suman para sí la certeza de una experiencia de afirmación autora como protagonistas de una comunidad creadora que se desafía a tejer lazos orgánicos para potenciarse. 

Accumulations, Visual Dialogues

Following an intense phase of collaborative work, Isabel Cisneros and Vicente Antonorsi have made public a “visual dialogue” which has proved to be at the same time enriching and challenging. Throughout a period of time which had to be extended due to the great interest aroused, a contingent of more than eight thousand visitors whose reactions ranged from admonition to exaltation, were witness to an artistic adventure catalyzed by a frame of mind that fosters a convergence and interpretation of meanings. The creative programs of both these artists, which bear an unequivocal personal imprint, accepted the challenge to go beyond their initial coincidences: the work with the node-module-fragment triad and geometric reduction and lyrical interpretation of natural forms. 

The project proposed the distilment and reciprocal transfusion of essential elements based on the disembodiment, the honest opening of each program to one another. In this encounter, Antonorsi summoned ceramic tiles to his assemblages, although he did not include the industrial gadgets that Cisneros commonly incorporates in her work, which, in turn, became permeable to the “live matter” with which the former constructs his imagery. Under the watchful eye of curator Miguel Miguel, the show was structured in such a way as to meet its purposes: the spectator began the tour of the exhibit flanked by mural exercises – Cisneros’s “extrusions” and Antonorsi’s “channels” – playing a game of blurring boundaries to move on to successive stations alternately tinged by the drive to fuse territories or affirm sovereignty over them. At the end of the process, when resuming the normal course of their activities, both artists benefit from the certainty of having incorporated an experience of authorial affirmation as protagonists of a creative community that takes up the challenge of weaving organic bonds to enhance its potential.