| Ķscar G. San Luis | |
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Ķscar G. San Luis This collection of sculptures and paintings presented by Mariano Navares under the title of “The weight of the emptiness” can drive the observer to see it as a monographic series, pointing –pieces and drawings– to a single theme which can be labelled as “Homo Consumens”. Nevertheless, this first interpretation, accurate as it may be, doesn’t exhaust all its meanings. Furthermore: it seems to point only to the second term –consumens– forgetting the first one –homo–. It’s important to realize this in order to avoid seeing in these works only a criticism to consumerism and not a human criticism too. If the Homo Erectus –the hominid that achieved standing up and walking– was the Homo sapiens ancestor and precursor, does it not seem that this Homo consumens, made bodily visible through Navares’ sculpture, is the negation of these unique human qualities, that is: erected walking and thinking capability? And, always in a metaphorical sense, is not this getting rid of its qualities –which make it different from the animals– an involution, or –bluntly speaking– a degeneration? Could it be then that the consumerism not only consumes goods, natural resources or merchandise of all types, but human beings too? Human beings unable to stand straight due to their heavy loads –the weight of the emptiness–. Human beings unable to think, alienated by goods fetishism. Human beings unable to scrutinize new evolution horizons –better indeed: revolution horizons– because their point of view is now lower. Working materials chosen by Navares to create this man are junk and metal scrap. So, iron, the metal that has accompanied the man through all the critical stages of his economic development –not only during the Industrial Revolution, but from the very beginning in the distant, prehistoric Iron Age– is the very same metal that, evocative, echoes in this sculptural work. But this is waste, useless iron in its last shape: cans, car elements, railway materials, etc. Then, remodeled, partially recovers its usefulness to be transformed in a claim, a symbol, and even more: in art work. Only with mastery can the iron be treated to create forms that drive us to all these meanings and, at the same time, that overwhelm them aesthetically. The human figure presented by Navares, although, unbalanced, unstable, bent and even humiliated by the weight it carries, is clearly stylized. If not overloaded by the heavy weight they bear, these figures, these human beings, would be supreme graceful, towering high, lightness, in a natural way, looking for their place in the heights (in fact, some of them fully surpass the natural size). The proportions of the figure’s members –stylized, superhuman– oppose their gesture –bent, infrahuman. But not only the chosen material and the form send us back to these contents; there is a third element that corroborates and organizes them, going beyond the mere figuration: they speak to us. These sculptures contain movement or –if not movement–, the inertia of two opposing forces looking for a difficult balance, an evasive stability. They are sculptures, but, paradoxically, they are not static at all. When contemplating them, the spectator finds not a pose or a fixed image, but a scene, a sequence, an event. The story these figures tell us with their outlines, gestures and manners, is already announced by the very same title of the exhibition: “The weight of the emptiness”, an emptiness that doesn’t refer to the void of the worshipped merchandises, to the pure appearance, but also to the inner emptiness, an emptiness that sticks through the figures’ heads with a clear and mysterious eye. And if we follow Galen –“It is not the eye the one that sees, but the soul through the eye”–, what will the soul of those men with their see through eyes be able to see? Certainly, even though surrounded by multiple things, it will see nothing or, in any case, only visions. But Navares not only uses figuration –shopping carts, bags, packages, a television set, a cash dispenser and other well known objects can be seen–, a stylized figuration, as said before. Also, the symbolism is very much present in his works in which additional pairs of opposites –very related with the above mentioned narrative, argumentative, or discursive ability– appear. Roughly mentioned: balance as opposed to unsteadiness; weights that bend the figures towards the ground, opposing height and slenderness and elevating them to the sky; the outspoken consumerism balancing the bodies’ thinness; nuances and details equalizing the pressed scrap iron blocks’ roughness; the merchandises’ abundance opposing the obvious emptiness; the art work opposing the commercial remainders. Another feature of this collection, although subtly spilled, is humor; a humor in form of irony that allows you a break, some spacing, against so much load, but that also affects you and moves you towards compassion. There is humor in “Two figures re-looking at each other”, or in “Trolley with figure” –not the other way around–, or in “Walking simulacrum” –although it rather seems to be a “loaded simulacrum”–, or in that “Figura convencida”. The figures that do not support the weight of a load directly also have an accurate relation with goods. This happens with the “Entangled Figure”, on the verge of falling in a daily trap, or with the “Enchanted Figure”, related to the TV set in an almost umbilical way that, perhaps, almost ends up transforming itself, through a strange metamorphosis or osmosis, in the “Figure in re-action”. On the other hand, also the humoristic “Figure which seems to think” is sitting on its own load but… is it thinking or simply taking a breath? This is the figure directly faced to the Homo sapiens of our zoological game; the others seem to oppose the Homo erectus rather. But there is one more figure, also without a load or on its load, the only one that faces all other figures –perhaps, the trustee of hope–: the “Figure with spreading wings”. Man, raising himself over his own load –overcoming it, literally– opens his arms at the last moment before throwing himself to the void. But he is not a suicide –not at all!– because he is determined to fly. Mariano Navares is a scrupulous and consistent sculptor, in whom forms and content are –appropriately named– a single piece. His artistic vocation did not start with sculpture; he arrived to sculpture step by step. His early drawings thickened through painting; paintings took shape until they became reliefs; and when these could not grow any more, came off the wall, lowered to the ground and raised as sculptures. Navares has not saved a single step to be the serious and persevering sculptor he is now, the one able to process countless industrial waste remainders to distil a few drops of beauty allowing the human being to follow their evolutionary way, at least, with some hope. |
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Mariona Rāfols The metallic echoes of the hammer against the anvil have been heard lately in the silence of our valley, giving us back the ancient and forgotten song of the worked iron. If you follow it, you will know Mariano Navares, a committed artist forging in his studio beautiful sculptures created from scrap iron, iron bulks and all kind of industrial and domestic metallic remainders. The symbolism of these materials is not innocent at all. It refers us to objects that, at one time, had an ephemeral meaning of fullness and when quickly worn-out and destroyed –burnt out– returned to be void. These stirring human figures, with their useless load –which they cannot get rid of– fighting with the precarious balance imposed by the carried weight, have a great beauty in their stylized form and with their distressed positions. But their meaning, indissolubly tied to the aesthetic pleasure, reveals itself in a shocking way. The denunciation is there, in that "homo consumens" burdened by the weight of his own emptiness, in whom the sensible and receptive observer will catch the very last intention of the artist: we cannot avoid anymore the reality that consumerism –in the past, a mere economic function– has become nowadays a cult, a compulsive action, an illness, and its purpose is to satisfy mediocre and banal fantasies stimulated by advertising, in order to cause –on purpose– our own alienation and loss of freedom. There, at the side of these sculptures, at the right distance and the suitable proportion to be oneself a part of them, you cannot avoid seeing reflected in them the huge failure of our society, neither can you avoid participating and feeling sympathetic to the effort and the load they carry… a load that everyone of us, perhaps unconsciously, carries too. This art work can lead us even to this point. Realizing this, maybe we can assume the commitment of Mariano Navares –the artist– for freedom, for an ecological and anti-consumerism vital attitude, making us feel a part of the –every day bigger– global movement of people who refuse to be manipulated. Estellencs, Mallorca. November 2002
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