MATERIALIZATION OF MEMORY BY BENSHIMOL, AT BELMONTE
By Álvaro de Benito
Belmonte is showing, until mid-month, Timelines (or Cross-Sections of Time), the first solo exhibition by Isabella Benshimol (Caracas, Venezuela, 1994) at the gallery. The show brings together some of the artist’s latest works, in which she explores accumulation as a translation of both memory and matter.
The Venezuelan artist employs everyday materials to freeze familiar situations from daily life and reference them as outcomes of temporality. Thus, elements such as textiles, fabrics, or ritualized gestures from ordinary routines acquire an ulterior material meaning while also pointing to a reflection on the significance of remembrance.
The addition of fixing agents — resin or silicone — contributes to the preservation of the habitual, transforming it into sculptures and artistic objects that conceal multiple readings. Her body of work traverses the realm of the customary with a sense of the ceremonial, elevating the common and recurrent to a state of significance.
Benshimol enters that space where the contradiction between action and solidity prevails, provoking a certain contemplation. The temporal and the immaterial, though not strictly linear, sustain processes of accumulation — layers of experience that may come to dwell in what remains visible.
Timelines (or Cross-Sections of Time) can be seen until November 15 at Galería Belmonte, Belmonte de Tajo 61, Madrid (Spain).

