Nombrar las cosas
The cards on the tableNombrar las cosas
Galería Casa Lamm
February 2008
By: Germaine Gómez Haro
Juanita Pérez has taken it upon herself to name things. In our own jargon this is like saying, “to put the cards on the table”: to speak directly and openly, giving the same weight to trivial and relevant issues, or even to transcendent things. Laying on the table her feelings, desires, memories, nostalgia-inspired thoughts, to be able to see them as an onlooker, as an observer who in her turn lays bare her own inner sorrows the better to look, know and recognize herself.
Tables, of course, are good for many things. That’s why Juanita chooses them as the main focus of her recent series of paintings now on show under the title, Naming Things. Tables are once everyday objects and vital spaces that evoke and summon us: gathering places, centers of coexistence; and they witness our tribulations, delights, confidences, joys and sorrows. Many times a story is woven around a table. In the canvases of this show, Juanita has painted tables that are symbolic references or mere compositional motifs, elevating household items to poetic metaphors. With her characteristic technical mastery, she places upon the tables pages of her diary that we have been reading in her artistic works, among the numerous chromatic folds of her rich canvases: identity, travels, passage, developments. Her paintings reveal a permanent self-referencing pursuit that gets displayed as an autobiographical itinerary through Colombia, the United States, Mexico City, Tepoztlán…
Juanita’s obsession of including maps and passports in her paintings, overflowing with matter and textures, is but a way of alluding to the endless inner voyage that painting is for her. A veiled way of exteriorizing anecdotes and exorcizing her demons: catharsis turned into a creative act. The bold and voluptuous coloring brings on a new glimmer, that of gold. If her painting were already baroque, they are now exceedingly so. They possess the luminosity of Colombia’s pre Hispanic gold, the splendor of New Spain’s gold-leaf altarpieces, the fine embroidery of tapestries and colonial brocades woven in gold thread. Golden exuberance evoked in infinite layers of superimposed painting, with hand-made paper and Indian textiles attached in well-balanced geometrical compositions, rigorously organized in harmonious and well-structured arrangements.
Juanita is a tireless traveler that walks with muffled steps her inner territories. Her paintings invite us to read between the lines, to look beyond the things in sight. They are paintings to be pondered with the eyes and glimpsed at with the heart. In naming things, Juanita meditates and conceptualizes her work searches and concerns. Her paintings are a mirror reflecting the indivisible couplet of her art and life.
Juanita is a tireless traveler that walks with muffled steps her inner territories. Her paintings invite us to read between the lines, to look beyond the things in sight. They are paintings to be pondered with the eyes and glimpsed at with the heart. In naming things, Juanita meditates and conceptualizes her work searches and concerns. Her paintings are a mirror reflecting the indivisible couplet of her art and life.