Carla Chaim: Oil tape carbon
Galeria Athena is pleased to present Oil Tape Carbon, by Carla Chaim.
The title of this exhibition by Carla Chaim points to the three central materials of the works presented here; more than that, choosing these words also denotes the relationship between her research and the physicality of things. Consequently, the place that the body of the artist and the body of the spectator occupy in relation to the images is therefore essential.
The artist carries on an investigation into the relationship between architecture and the human body through the act of risking and recording. Her body moves toward the walls of Athena Contemporânea carrying an oil stick in one hand, and she draws the boundaries between what is inside the gallery and what would be outside. An irregular black line runs through the usual white space of the exhibition cube, also highlighted by the white clothing worn by the artist – this is a reminder of the historical equation between graphite and paper. This risk brings to the viewer a notion of boundary that carries within itself the irregularity and instability intrinsic to human anatomy and our gestures. Although the sides of the gallery have symmetry and a geometric plan, when we descend from this Platonic sphere and yield to this vital experience, the straight bold lines quickly become irregular and faded.
Two video cameras record this action, which is projected onto two monitors. Installed back to back, they seem to emphasize the inability to grasp the whole – whether it is architecture or any other image. The invitation to the body (now of the viewer) follows – to move from here to there, circling the sculpture-videos and trying to accompany an action that has never happened in a separated way. But when it turns into records that resemble a surveillance camera, they also suggest that we watch the movement of the artist’s body. If the act of being drawn in the gallery has recoded its rectilinear space into something irregular, the option of recording with video and showing the action in this way doubles the same space in two and opens Chaim’s experimentation as to the different ways of recoding a same space – not only formally, but also in other semantics.
These elements become even clearer in the series “He Wanted to be a Flag,” presented here for the first time. The artist uses carbon paper, a material she has been exploring recently, and presents it in different compositions. There are different ways to approach this series, but we can begin with the path we have taken of its relation to the gallery’s spatiality: the starting point for the use of carbon is always the floor plan of the space itself. Carbon paper, commonly used to duplicate documents because of its chemical composition, is used here to duplicate the geometry of space. After cutting the paper, different ways of folding and supporting the material are presented and the layout of the gallery is dismantled before our eyes. The relation between body and architecture is again present, but with no need for this dialogue to be pamphletary, approaching the desire of the one who observes – her work, for example, of geometric abstraction.
On the other hand, the title of these works and their spatial configuration offer elements that allow a distant interpretation of theoretical-formal aspects of Western art history, and which lead us to a greater polysemy. We have shapes in front of us that inevitably recall flags – some hung parallel to the wall, while others are laid on the floor. A third group, also placed on the floor, consists of a series of folds that take on the gray tone of the concrete floor as an element of their structure – without adding poles, these two small piles seem the most distant and therefore the most desirous to be flags one day. There is an anti-monumentality in these objects – all of them are more like kites than flags. Their wooden poles, added to their black color and inevitable association to mourning, for example, seem to declare their inadequacy to the grandiose and identifying statement of any flag. Powerful as a formal artistic experimentation and deliberately withdrawn as an inflamed argument, they are at the levels of our feet and it would only take a false step to break them apart.
Finally, one notices that the works gathered here are examples of Carla Chaim’s experimentation and obsession with different ways of exploring an image from a specific architectural space. If drawing and its expanded field of language and poetics are a safe space for its practice, it seems that it is in this exploration of a certain artistic informality – so well represented in these pieces that relate to the ground and the absence of control of gravity – that her research seems to reach a place that intrigues those who accompany this research.
In the same manner that these options take a risk and illustrate the exit from a safe place, the invitation is given that future texts about her work will also amplify the scope of reading that often remain in the dangerous comfort zone of relations with abstraction, geometry, and formalism. Let us learn from her videos and flag projects and ponder that mourning can be anywhere – especially in the silence of black squares – just as the relationships between body and architecture can be less hedonistic and more relative to our physical and territorial limits.
Raphael Fonseca
