Patricia Aguilera
Una Realidad Imaginaria
"Una Realidad Imaginaria" began with the intention of exploring and sharing the inexpressible in the visible field from a personal point of view. This work consists of an approach to painting from particular experiences, considering aspects of color, figure, perception and emotions.
The focus of the research is the production of a series of paintings and pastels in which each work made includes the representation of a moment of my perception of reality and its alterations in specific moments that I have lived: mental images, thoughts and audiovisual hallucinations, accompanied by my moods. My goal in this project is for art to mediate some of these experiences, considering specific sensory channels as motifs for painting.
This body of work approaches through painting and drawing experiences of altered perception. Color relationships generate sensory atmospheres of mental images, thoughts, and hallucinations. My notion of reality was the starting point to look for my own painting. The series of works that I made is relevant to me because it deals with the relationship of delirium with a reality external to me.
I intend to unite in painting a mixture between the imaginary and an objective moment that corresponds to my assimilated experience of my experience. Una Realidad Imaginaria 2022 was exhibited in a collective exhibition at Centro Roberto Garza Sada, Monterrey, Mexico and partially at Espacio FAMA 2022 at F-A-M-A Monterrey, Mexico.
When considering the relationship between life and death, I like to imagine that the burden of death is not living. Embracing impermanence can alleviate the burdens of life. All that exists leaves something substantial behind.
“The Rejoining” is a thought on death and frontfacing life. I like to imagine that the burden of death is not living. I believe that embracing impermanence can alleviate the burdens of life. A first-person view of a figure resting in nature explores themes of the body, impermanence and death. All that exists leaves something substantial behind. Knowing that the intangible endures is the wonder of life.
“Big Stout” is a portrait of my brother. To me, painting is a way to describe an essence in atemporality. The title of this piece is linked to Teju Cole’s writing Shadow Cabinet on artist Kerry James Marshall’s work. His insight on color and naming resonated with me particularly regarding the establishing of character through color at an early age.
To create “Small Stout”, I started from a photograph of a special memory with my family in the south of Mexico, conversations between laughter, cooperation and play built a fun and changing home. Over the years, time transforms the essence of the space and the figures. Although for me the essence of this space is the same: a cultural heritage. I made the painting in memory of the color that the shadow impregnates in my person with an intuitive look, in my opinion the color in this piece resembles that of the mushroom. As in the previous work, Big Stout, the title refers to Kerry J. M.
The shadow in "Synesthesia-Croesthesia" is a representation of sound, while the negative space (white) is the sunlight hitting the objects through the window. Reading the subtitles of a film, I heard different sounds related to the landscape of the north of the country, to temporal transitions such as the change from day to night, and to popular culture. Sounds that only lived in my perception during the moment of recovery.
I choose colors based on intuitive and light color energy range criteria. I look at the energy in the aura and the ultraviolet rays in the substance. When using color in relation to the figure, I ask where the color is felt in the body. In “Ramón”, the bright red silhouette adds a spiritual motif and refers to the essence of the character. How can we describe the word Ramon? The use of color in this family portrait is intuitive and has a spiritual motif. The choice of colors is personal and inspired by an aura reading I had in Tepoztlán. The colors express themselves in physical matter and represent the immaterial.
The painting “O-María” is about a moment of approaching my mother in a state of psychosis. It is based on the words written by Isabella Baumfree, a women's rights activist, and Sojourner Truth in her Carte de Visite: "I sell the shadow to sustain the substance". The diagonal line is a reference to the Japanese thread in popular culture and the diversity of character differences. The moment we shared was enhanced by producer Luis Delgado's composition 'Oh María, madre mía'.
During a personal crisis in northern Mexico, my nuclear family was present with me in a moment of trance. We had a dialogue about life and everyday experiences. This moment is the story behind “Lenguas Intérpretes”. The color magenta alludes to the division of space and time into binary relationships and a perspective of mental-personal introspection.
"R-G-R" is a piece that refers to black holes: their space-time relationship and the red thread of Japanese culture. The negative space in the figure and the lower part of the sheet is a representation of time and the path of people in space and memory. I see the color black in my work as a representation of the origin of matter, of life, from my perception as a living being. I think about color from my emotional point of view during personal crises and my everyday perception in states of peace and complete happiness. I consider questions about the universe and theories of dark energy that expand the cosmos to consider color from my imagination. Black pigment: known in matter as carbon or charcoal, it is physically nothing more than a lack of information in human visual perception. "Black" has an infinity of ultraviolet colors that only a few earthly creatures know. These small beings enjoy the privilege of seeing things as they are. In my perception, fear is a reflection of the person that comes from the fear of darkness and uncertainty. Fear of the above is fear of substance, value and ego.