ABRIR GALLERY PRESENTS " JAMAS SU TRONCO ENDEREZA " AND "TODAY IS OUR TOMORROW"

In jamas su tronco endereza (its trunk never straightens), Alexandra presents three groups of work: “Siempre nos vamos por las ramas” (We always go around the bush), “Duermes como una tronco” (You sleep like a log) and “Árbol que nace torcido jamás su tronco endereza” (Tree that is born bent, never straightens its trunk). Alluding to popular sayings, the reference to nature conceives an environment of reflection regarding the body and mind. In "We always go around the bush", the human body becomes a tree: rooted and isolated, apparently in itself and only in itself. Still, it is tends, stretches, and dialogues through its branches. The bodies approach, brush, intertwine but do not touch, only their branches. In “You sleep like a log”, the artist poses in photographic self-portraits that move away from the tension of the first video to rest and “recharge energetically… now they are contemplated meditative, relaxed”. Finally, in “Tree that is born bent, never straightens its trunk”, Alexandra makes a journey from the open and natural space to the intimacy of her house with a trunk that exceeds her in size. In this process, the trunk is loaded, dragged, cut and even domesticated, thus becoming part of the artist; she is a tree and the tree is an artist.

In the end, in its trunk never straightens, the artist makes us part of the transforming and self-generated cycle in which human and nature are symbiosis.

Alexandra Colmenares Cossio (Lima 1986) is a Peruvian photographer and artist living in Belgium since 2013. “I am a photographer by profession but over the years and since I live in Belgium my work has evolved to manifest itself through different methodologies such as performance, video, sound and installation, always finding a way of connection and relationship between these media and photography to help me create narratives and identify a contemplative look towards the processes of change, our relationship with nature, the space and transformation within everyday life."

Today is our tomorrow is presented rather as a daily practice format during two weeks, where Rocío engages in a search for images that rather renounces bounding. Reflecting on the artistic process itself, the exhibited works, which are result and process at the same time, unfold into what could be referred to as inspiration/inspired. The “Dark Days” paintings are based on an archive of video stills that serve the artist to materialize the concepts that surround her and challenge her in this two-week exercise.

The “Daily practice” paintings build a sort of gallery that obtains meaning as soon as its signifier is interrelated with others. At the end, the artist shares a video where the creative process becomes visible from a more intimate place, as methodical as it is free. This invitation to the artist's studio provokes reflections of the type creatio ex nihilo vs. creatio ex materia, and puts into play the relationship between perception and conception, how are these two activities related? Why do we see what we see? And, in what way do we apply, or not, reason and relation to the stimuli that surround us? Witnessing Rocío's group of works requires witnessing an endless state of creation.

Rocío Gomez (Lima 1973) lives and works in Lima. Her work is based on drawing and painting, but she also explores other routes such as performance, video and photography, complementing them with her studies in Visual Anthropology. In her work, she investigates the relationship between language, images and reality. She inquires about how meaning emerges, how truth is presented, and the social ways in which meaning has been and is given to something. The diversity of media responds to each particular thematic search.