Silence is also meaning
With the silence of my lips I baffle the most skeptical
“Leaves of Grass”. Walt Whitman
Silence is an endangered word in practical life. Any dictionary, of course, includes it. But when reading the definition it sounds utopian, it is hard to believe that it can be applied in everyday life. Silence is not just the absence of noise. We have almost forgotten it . With this transcendental affirmation, Alain Corbin begins his essay “History of silence”. Because noise always seems to refer to auditory noise, but we forget that noise can also be visual. The overexposure of images is such that the Ludovico method, instead of being a shock therapy, has become the usual way of consuming everything, culture included.
Are sensitive life and aesthetic experiences becoming stagnant in the midst of so much noise? How can we separate the wheat from the chaff? There is talk of infoxication or information overload (for the more globalized). We live in a world in which digitalization is on the rise. As a result of this and the speed of a system in which everything can be obtained immediately at the click of a button, we forget that silence exists and that it is necessary in the midst of all the infobesity and, sometimes, we also forget that physical contact and direct experience are irreplaceable. Perhaps, rather than resetting and returning to the starting point, it would be wiser to pause and rethink the situation. Gilles Lipovetsky and Jean Serroy in the book “The Aesthetization of the World. Living in the age of artistic capitalism” they warn: We are in the age of the de-absolutization of art, both of its missions and of its lived experience. For some time now it has been common to hear conversations of the following type:
-I have seen such an exhibition.
-Oh, yes, I’m looking forward to visiting it. I’ve read about it and I’m attracted to both the subject matter and the artists. So what do you think? What did you think? Did you like the staging?
-From what I could see on social networks, I thought it was not bad.
I think we are missing the point; the tools at our disposal are a means, not an end. Lipovetsky and Serroy add: An aesthetic life worthy of the name should not be imprisoned by the limits of market rules, nor should it be realized in a universe victim of haste and urgency. It is necessary to meet again with the exhibition, with the works shown, to physically enjoy their arrangement in space. And this must be done slowly, contemplatively, in silence. Banishing, even, any craving for explanation. Banishing, even, this text.
I return to Corbin when I affirm that thought works in silence and that learning silence is all the more essential because silence is the element in which important things are forged. Important from the point of view of the artist working on his work in the studio, as well as from the viewer who then approaches those works in an exhibition. With this in mind, Nuria Fernández, director of Espacio Líquido, has brought together the works of Irma Álvarez-Laviada, Lara Ruiz, Shirin Salehi and Job Sánchez Julián in an exhibition entitled SILENCIO.
I confess my predilection for the silent arts. With this revelation Eugène Delacroix appealed to the mute charm and seriousness of painting and sculpture as opposed to the word, so talkative itself. The word, indiscreet, solicits attention, while the strength of painting and sculpture would operate in the silence of the gaze.
Irma Álvarez-Laviada’s Pedestal , inspired by the various restoration processes of the Patio de los Leones of the Alhambra, adds with each marble layer a base that finally does not support anything physical, but metaphorical, since dispossessed of any architectural function, it shelters the chromatic memory of the various pavements silenced by the processes of covering or elimination of the successive historical eras.
Lara Ruiz’s works are conceived on the basis of formal simplicity and dialogue with the space in which they are located. In her tubular structures and simple geometries, emptiness has a marked importance as an essential element both for the construction of the pieces themselves and the place in which they are placed, as well as in their interaction with the public. The void, as an absence of matter, is a necessary spatial silence that is an active part of his compositions.
Shirin Salehi longs for the work of art not to manifest its full meaning in the first instance and rebels against the prevailing culture of superficiality. Piano piano si arriva lontano is an Italian proverb. In the face of visual overabundance, his intimate and delicate work requires a calm gaze to delve into its aesthetic and conceptual depth. If we approach slowly, we will go far. In the face of the image-spectacle, subtlety; in the face of excess, recollection; in the face of noise, silence.
Job Sánchez Julián’s chromatic exercises, closer to the field of craftsmanship (patterns or rhythms of ceramic or textile design) transform the circle and the square to elaborate cryptic visual messages. The communication of the created language is silent, only transmitted through a code of shapes and colors not exempt of interferences due to the impossibility of showing compact images.
Four artists, four ways of facing creation, four ways of visualizing silence. And a way of approaching the exhibition. Let us not be skeptical, do not forget that silence is also meaning. Words of Walt Whitman.
Text Natalia Alonso Arduengo
Activity subsidized by:
Are sensitive life and aesthetic experiences becoming stagnant in the midst of so much noise? How can we separate the wheat from the chaff? There is talk of infoxication or information overload (for the more globalized). We live in a world in which digitalization is on the rise. As a result of this and the speed of a system in which everything can be obtained immediately at the click of a button, we forget that silence exists and that it is necessary in the midst of all the infobesity and, sometimes, we also forget that physical contact and direct experience are irreplaceable. Perhaps, rather than resetting and returning to the starting point, it would be wiser to pause and rethink the situation. Gilles Lipovetsky and Jean Serroy in the book “The Aesthetization of the World. Living in the age of artistic capitalism” they warn: We are in the age of the de-absolutization of art, both of its missions and of its lived experience. For some time now it has been common to hear conversations of the following type:
-I have seen such an exhibition.
-Oh, yes, I’m looking forward to visiting it. I’ve read about it and I’m attracted to both the subject matter and the artists. So what do you think? What did you think? Did you like the staging?
-From what I could see on social networks, I thought it was not bad.
I think we are missing the point; the tools at our disposal are a means, not an end. Lipovetsky and Serroy add: An aesthetic life worthy of the name should not be imprisoned by the limits of market rules, nor should it be realized in a universe victim of haste and urgency. It is necessary to meet again with the exhibition, with the works shown, to physically enjoy their arrangement in space. And this must be done slowly, contemplatively, in silence. Banishing, even, any craving for explanation. Banishing, even, this text.
I return to Corbin when I affirm that thought works in silence and that learning silence is all the more essential because silence is the element in which important things are forged. Important from the point of view of the artist working on his work in the studio, as well as from the viewer who then approaches those works in an exhibition. With this in mind, Nuria Fernández, director of Espacio Líquido, has brought together the works of Irma Álvarez-Laviada, Lara Ruiz, Shirin Salehi and Job Sánchez Julián in an exhibition entitled SILENCIO.
I confess my predilection for the silent arts. With this revelation Eugène Delacroix appealed to the mute charm and seriousness of painting and sculpture as opposed to the word, so talkative itself. The word, indiscreet, solicits attention, while the strength of painting and sculpture would operate in the silence of the gaze.
Irma Álvarez-Laviada’s Pedestal , inspired by the various restoration processes of the Patio de los Leones of the Alhambra, adds with each marble layer a base that finally does not support anything physical, but metaphorical, since dispossessed of any architectural function, it shelters the chromatic memory of the various pavements silenced by the processes of covering or elimination of the successive historical eras.
Lara Ruiz’s works are conceived on the basis of formal simplicity and dialogue with the space in which they are located. In her tubular structures and simple geometries, emptiness has a marked importance as an essential element both for the construction of the pieces themselves and the place in which they are placed, as well as in their interaction with the public. The void, as an absence of matter, is a necessary spatial silence that is an active part of his compositions.
Shirin Salehi longs for the work of art not to manifest its full meaning in the first instance and rebels against the prevailing culture of superficiality. Piano piano si arriva lontano is an Italian proverb. In the face of visual overabundance, his intimate and delicate work requires a calm gaze to delve into its aesthetic and conceptual depth. If we approach slowly, we will go far. In the face of the image-spectacle, subtlety; in the face of excess, recollection; in the face of noise, silence.
Job Sánchez Julián’s chromatic exercises, closer to the field of craftsmanship (patterns or rhythms of ceramic or textile design) transform the circle and the square to elaborate cryptic visual messages. The communication of the created language is silent, only transmitted through a code of shapes and colors not exempt of interferences due to the impossibility of showing compact images.
Four artists, four ways of facing creation, four ways of visualizing silence. And a way of approaching the exhibition. Let us not be skeptical, do not forget that silence is also meaning. Words of Walt Whitman.
Text Natalia Alonso Arduengo
Activity subsidized by: