Marta Chilindron

If past interests are apparent to those who have been following her work over the last decade, now more complex results and a well-built consistency is also discernible. There is an idea and it is visible throughout the installation. As she says: “Reflecting on the notion of perception I examined ideas of change, sequencing, beginning and ending. In acknowledging that we are all subjected to constant change, I arrived at the idea of making work with no definite shape; it would move from the second to the third dimension and back."
On a meditative stage, she flows between reality and mind games, provoking nothing less than a visual sensation of realism and an erroneous perception of existence. The unexpected cuts and transitions made in the constructions of hinged sheets of hard, brightly colored, transparent Polycarbonate and acrylic are an unusual mix between nature and artifice; a comprehensive mode of understanding the world as existing in different manifestations at different times. Her use of acrylic sheets makes the work reflective and transparent - almost invisible.
In one way or another, they all implicate the viewer in a scheme where the “real and the imaginary are confounded in the same operational totality” ─ involving a “kind of sixth sense for fakery, montage, scenarios,” as Baudrillard wrote in l992 in The Hyper-realism of Simulation. Chilindron fosters the aesthetic of ambiguity by creating environments that consciously confuse the two: the perceptible and the hypothetical. As a result, Constructions are simultaneously artifice and interior spaces of vastness.
The question of perception and reality is more often invoked when an artist is working with digital media which employs movement. Chilindron´s strategies imply "instability" and "illustrate the continuous change in our uncertain reality.” Within the context of media, the distinctions between what is natural and what is not, "have thankfully disappeared" and viewers are consistently intrigued by the boundaries between different levels of reality and image, as Ron Burnett wrote in the book How Images Think. Yet, there is no electronic media in these 4-dimensional Constructions -- a denomination for her work she prefers to "sculptures." Maybe they can be called environments, which when displayed in the gallery fill the space with shapes, forms, light and make the viewer question their meaning, and as Burnett said, look for the margins of perception and reality. The link between perception/reality acquires some unusual nuances since what the viewer sees always expresses and evokes something else. As with dreams, or presence and absence, her constructions are not explicit.
Here her constructions are inspired by the elements of nature: fire, water, and so on. She wants the viewer to be immersed and surrounded by the work. The intention is to create fake nature, a fake reality which could be manipulated and controlled. The pieces are based on geometric shapes, which reduces them to simpler and easier to understand forms. They create a simplified reality that we can all recognize and agree on.
Rather, they apparently seem at ease with the retinal and intellectual pleasure they offer. They have a formal aspect in the sense of their structural qualities - or the effective organization of the elements through the use of the principles of design and geometry. Chilindron’s geometric bases for her constructions can organize our perception of the current chaotic times in which we live by requiring viewers to take their time.
In contrast with the formal aspects found in her work, her visual and perceptual processes offer a potent dose of emotionalism, or an aesthetic that places emphasis on the expressive qualities of the work. It gradually provokes a vivid communication of moods, feelings, and ideas, and dissolves in a disjunctive imagery handled through layered and unexpected montage. Chilindron folds and cuts, making unusual and colorful environments and allowing the viewer to make his/her own reality. The work constructs itself out of a few hinged, folded, flat panels into a real object in real space, and with a few folds, it could collapse back into the plane again. There is no beginning or end.
Today, there are different ways to narrate and disclose events; mass media is not the only and inevitable route. Art is still a powerful medium despite the commercialized state of the current global art market. To look closely at the world is to understand the subtle connections between the apparent stability of our daily routine and the complex subtexts that keep the modern state (surprisingly) afloat. Chilindron’s apparently fragile objects reflect on the possibilities and challenges of visually representing mobility, displacement, and the circulation of people. As she says, they are small networks where all elements are indispensable in creating the whole object. And in contrast with the static qualities of objects, those constructions/environments irradiate a sensation of moving in and out of the images. In their fictional dissembled and dispersed way, there is an exploration of spaces and movements that imbue the construction with an emotional punch through a sequence of disorienting juxtapositions. The work is both reflective and transparent and responds differently in various lighting conditions and from different vantage points.
While other exhibitions with only seven works can be viewed in a couple of minutes, that is not the case here. “Constructions” raises a plethora of incoherencies, including our unwillingness to address instability on a daily level - where ambiguity and unpredictability are banished - which requires time. How might this new state of affairs reflect on the making, the public reception, and the understanding of contemporary art.

*Curator at Large Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid, independent curator and writer.