"THE WHOLE IS MORE THAN THE SUM OF ITS PARTS": A CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVE ON PROCESS ART

The exhibition is mainly made up of three-dimensional artworks where the relationship with space and the effect of the objects on the spectators is fundamental. According to Gregorio Cámara's text, all the artworks exhibited were conceived in an exercise of approximation to a series of articles written during the 1960s by the American artist Robert Morris (USA, 1931 - 2018), a key figure for understanding Minimalism and postminimalism currents.

 These texts, called Notes on Sculpture and Anti Form, proposed the production of artworks of art that responded to the psychic state of the artists. A sort of extension of pictorial abstract expressionism but taken to the installation, where the materials of the work must, in some way, manifest the creative process as a process of psychic changes. In this way, as Cámara writes in El todo es más que la suma de las partes, this allows "presenting the materials used by the artists as bridges to the process of conception and realisation of the work", facilitating for the spectators "an integral perception of the creative development".

A few lines further on and in relation to the exhibition, Cámara says: "The heterogeneity or indeterminacy of the parts is not an obstacle to achieving a sense of the work as a whole. Common elements in the work of Cárdenas, Femenía and Ikenaga are identified as the appropriation of objects with a previous functionality, as well as the effect of time in the creation phase and in the materials themselves. These are what provide the keys to an experience of immediate, unitary and free perception".  

El todo es más que la suma de las partes - Leyla Cárdenas / Inma Femenía / Hisae Ikenaga from Max Estrella on Vimeo.

Leyla Cárdenas' installations -Mutual Dissolution and Under Other Conditions- are a reflection of time and memory. Through pieces made of polyester silk fibre, the material manifests itself as a representation of the abandonment and passing of time: the artist, in her creative process, leaves this mark on the unravelled material.

As for Inma Femení’s artwork Hold, it is an installation that, as Cámara outlines, "comes to stage Morris's definition of Anti-Forma to perfection". Anti-Form, also called Process Art, proposed the implementation of malleable materials that could be affected by physical forces themselves: weight, pressure, erosion, etcetera.  Along these lines, Femenía took the form of plastic used by farmers in the Almàssera region to develop a sculpture. Thus, both gravity and time take on essential features on her work.

Finally, Hisae Ikenaga exhibits a group of works from different series -Sutil Olvido, Only Wood, Collages and Fósiles-Vasija. The Mexican artist transfers everyday objects to the exhibition space with the intention of sensorially questioning the spectator, stripping the materials of all functionality.