La piel de nadie

Drawings by Susana Solano

Aurora García

 The drawings assembled by Susana Solano under the title La piel de nadie (The Skin of Nobody) amount to extended, heterogeneous gestures or, to put it another way, to a plurality of successive gestures filling the entire surface of the paper and ultimately merging in a rhythm which is unitary and often explosive. Thus the lightweight material becomes a field of action where no compositional or formal priorities exist because the whole of it is occupied from the start and everything surfaces with the same intensity and energy from a magma and thickness which penetrate deep into the heart of nature.

 The artist establishes an unmediated physical relationship with these works, using her hand, or often both hands, to mould them from pigments and latex which she applies to the reluctant white sheet by means of pressure, friction and movements marked by both violence and tenderness of touch. There is nothing at all surprising about this method of working for much of Susana Solano’s sculptural output on sheets of iron – or pieces of lead –, notably the works done before 1987, stresses treatment by hand and its imprint on metallic materials. Much the same applies to the importance of handling in her more recent sculptures, predominated as they are by the use of wire netting whose ductility is shaped like some fabric of plant or animal origin which lends itself to gathering, bulging or plaiting. In this respect, the artist’s extraordinary ability to deal with the skin of metals as though it were her own skin, organic and sensitive, capable of swelling or shrinking, of receiving unexpected marks or displaying wounds or scars, has so far come in for insufficient attention.

 But let us return to the drawings, which, in fact, despite the use of graphite, are akin to paintings in terms of the mediums employed. One of their characteristic features is immediacy of execution. They are transfers of raw energy in which touch emerges as the primordial factor, for the artist wants nothing to be lost in transmission before reaching its destination on the paper. The latter is an area of total freedom where that which is hoarded up in the sphere of sensations can be released: as Leonardo da Vinci said, “All knowledge comes to us from the sensations”1. Even so, this sensory deposit acts here like a torrent so fast and powerful that the outlines of many of the ingredients it sweeps along are not immediately recognizable: in the face of such a phenomenon, it is the vision of the whole that matters, it is allowing the imagination to penetrate into the ambiguous density of the impetuous current.

 This “skin of nobody” possesses the gift of ubiquity. It is possibly a way of appealing to Nature, of which everything and all of us are a part. It is Nature felt at close quarters, melting into our own flesh, our own hands, into the very lights, shadows and currents which find a haven in the artist’s innermost space. The total negation of this “nobody” can easily entail the generalized assertion of “everything” or “everyone” – that which excludes nothing, in other words. And it is precisely this overall perception subjected to time, to different instants, this indiscriminate burden of impressions that are created one by one in the soul, which lacks a clearly-defined face, belonging rather to a speculative dynamic projecting gesturesof diverse tendency in multiple directions before reverting to the work and discharging itself with a breath and colour that vary from sheet to sheet.

 On occasions these drawings seem like automatic, rebellious signs – like anticalligraphic signs, one might say, which are pervaded by a flashing light unrelated to any prognosis and give rise to a dense fabric with hermetic signs that can be glimpsed in water, in the atmosphere, in earth and even in fire.

 Dark-hued pigments cross the entire pictorial field, driven by water and the action of hands. Light beams through them from the paleness of the paper or from the use of some other contrasting colouring, but not always openly, sometimes struggling to overcome the barrier of darkness, since the illumination comes usually from the back. These works do not claim to be representational in the usual meaning of the term, they provide no information about any being, object or concrete event but nevertheless awaken numerous echoes in the field of perception because, as mentioned above, the skin of nobody could well encompass the skin of everybody and of everything. They appear to be searching for a state of indeterminacy in solidarity with the entire world, with the essential phenomena which constitute the world and which, therefore, are in direct competition with man.

 Nor is Susana Solano’s sculpture as a whole located at any specific level of representation, as is the case of much of the three-dimensional output of both past and present, even though many contemporary three-dimensional objects tend towards the abstraction of the precise model which serves as a referent: her works are born in an ever-widening symbolic sphere leading to pathways where physical experiences and mental impressions join together in a globalizing vision of the world which always stems from the artist’s own individual personality. This broader path, which makes tangible or conjures up for us those aspects of art which are more proper to painting, on account of the illusory character attributed to it, is still infrequent today, to say the least, possibly because of the difficulty of following it through the materials and conditions inherent to sculpture, whose contents and goals, moreover, are continually being renewed.

 Evidence of Susana Solano’s interest in obviating the distinction between the specific languages of art so as to achieve a unbroken overlap between them, a total compatibility enabling them to cohabit, is provided by the fact that she now also places quite large drawings – with sides some 130 cm long – on wheels, some distance from the ground, framed in an iron and glass structure. A dialogue is thus achieved between pairs of drawings while at the same time an interchange is established with the remaining works on paper which hang from the exhibition room wall in accordance with more conventional norms. This partial translation of the drawing to the field of sculpture is similar to previous accomplishments of the artist in the photographic field. In “Varanasi III”, which she recently exhibited in Granada and Sintra, to go no further. This work, which is not an isolated instance in Solano’s latest period, also appears inserted between iron and glass. Its two parts are unfolded in space: one on the lower part of the wall, the other a short distance away, but slightly above ground level. Conceptually speaking, this pair of instant images obtained with the camera during one of her journeys to the Orient stretches from the wall to the floor, where sculptures are usually located, uniting the notion of a three-dimensional work with that of photography and even with painting and drawing, as developed by herself.

 To Susana Solano, however, photography is the medium she uses when she wants to capture images that exist on the outside, images with all their contours, with all their attributes, regardless of the process of interiorization and broadening or deviation of objective reality which occurs when her personal world fully intervenes and is revealed in the sculptural process. This is not to imply that with the camera the selective eye is of little consequence. On the contrary: the gaze of the person taking a photograph chooses from among the things surrounding it and selects the instant at which it is captured in the light of its innermost conformation; and this phenomenon of selection varies from one set of eyes to another, from one disposition to another. But unless works are manipulated by transporting the images towards pathways different from the original one – and Susana Solano is not fond of doing this – the representational character of the images is obvious. And this, up till now, has been the only medium she has used to attain what is commonly understood as representation in art.

 In the drawings, on the other hand – these sheets of paper with no lines and no apparent organization, only a field of colour, or colours, that fills the entire surface thanks to pressure from the hands – unexpected encounters take place and are discovered even by the artist herself. At times they seem pulverized visions, storms of particles scattering in all directions, or lashing waves captured from within, where their shape is lost and only their essence remains. On other occasions a sort of arborescent framework arises, as though we were penetrating into the depths of a forest and a very nearby fragment of a panorama had been sliced off. Or again we may witness accidents of the earth captured in close-up. But in any event, it is activity which stands out, rather than form, which is either concealed or endowed with a thousand faces. In this context we recall the perspicacity of the following words written by Goethe many years ago: “Anyone can see matter in front of him. Contents can only be found by one who is concerned with them. And form is a secret for nearly everyone”2.

 After many years of splendid dedication to sculpture, Susana Solano sees matter as nobody else does. But directly linked to matter is the universe of the phenomena which cause it to exist, by which it is modified or impelled towards death. Such phenomena do not always possess definite contours, or even a body. But they do possess extraordinary dynamic force, even in apparent quietude, and penetrate into man’s innermost depths, conditioning his very nature. Realizing this, the artist does not confine herself to the external medium which can be perceived with the sense of sight: she brings into play everything capable of extracting what resides in the intangible dimension of the human being, a place which is complex to fix and to discern, a place of infinite variations.

 The drawings, being both graphic and direct – since drawings they are for the artist and not paintings –, provide a way of bringing what nestles in the inner world to the surface and of observing how it signifies the continuation of what is located outside oneself, leaving aside the thorny and debatable problem of definition of form which is not of prime concern here. They are a metaphor of life in the broadest sense, of the perceptible and hidden vibrations which make things pulsate, of storms followed by a calm which endures for a while, of the skin denied in the very title, perhaps because it in no way wishes to be fixed.

 Existence acquires greater meaning if it is permeable to the full range of life’s manifestations, to the diversity of landscapes and cultures. Susana Solano has always displayed this spirit of openness, enquiry and solidarity. Her frequent travels throughout the world bring her into proximity with situations different from those she herself experiences and this helps to broaden her perception and ultimately reverts to her works. Montaigne used to say, on the subject of travel: “The soul is continuously at work observing what is unknown and new: and I know of no better school, as I have often said, for giving form to life than to offer it unceasingly the diversity of so many other lives, other ideas and other customs, and to have it taste this constant variety of the forms of our nature”3.

 NOTES

1. Leonardo da Vinci, Aforismos, Madrid, 1997, p. 40
2. J.W. von Goethe, “Máximas sobre arte y artistas”, in Fragmentos para una teoría romántica del arte. Madrid, 1987, p. 173
3. M. de Montaigne, Páginas inmortales, Barcelona, 1993, p. 120