Melisa Boratyn
For a long time, Luciana Rondolini raised and questioned the value of our cultural icons, fame, idols and why not people. How and in what way we grant certain schemes and meanings to the image that the fashion and entertainment industry orchestrates maliciously and brilliantly to generate in us a feeling of desire and idolatry. For this experience there were two slogans, the need for exploration through the work, moving away from the traditional format, to experiment with matter, and the manipulation of space from a more risky and challenging approach.
On the other hand, there is the sense of what Luciana creates. The statement lies in reestablishing a criticism towards a greater postulate. What is the meaning of the dogmas and the structures that they impose on us? Are they as ephemeral as consumer objects or the figures imposed as fashion?
Many times, in the face of Dior politics, religions or advertising we behave the same way. They supposedly protect us and provide a framework of safeguard and security, a path to follow, settling as firm and accurate, undeniable principles. However, they are also manipulative and generate false illusions. States, institutions or any regulatory entity when empty, proclaim foundations and promises that we expect desperately to save us. However, ladies and gentlemen, the most sensible thing is to understand that at the end of the day, as we move away from the maelstrom, the mandates and the hundreds of stimuli that we did not manage to process, we are alone. This is the time to learn to fend for ourselves, establish spirituality and be self-conscious.
These last words are reflected in one of the many excerpts that Luciana sent me as a reference, compared to what I thought she wanted to convey with the work she was developing thanks to this new exploration. The return trip in front of the decision to put words to an aesthetic and theoretical journey of an artist is not an easy task nor is it always necessary. However, it can be an enriching process that contributes one more layer to the final result, generating the need to investigate inside the works to try to understand what lies behind what springs without stopping from your hands and mind.
Because although Luciana’s work seems to focus on the surface, abundant, recharged and nibbled, it goes much further, being born from the depths of the bowels, from what we do not see and still perceive latent as the end that is looming. The secret is found inside those polished fruits that rot, the plaster filling that descends, the mask that melts, falling by its own weight or the hand created from the accident that desperately seeks to dislodge. It is just a matter of waiting for the truth to break out in front of our faces.
Perhaps then the end will come, one that although you don’t have to wait vehemently, it is gratifying to know that it exists and that the path does not extend towards a meaningless infinity.
Del Infinito Gallery, Buenos Aires, February, 2018