Gabriela Germaná, 2007
Art historian and researcher at the Museum of Art, Universidad de San Marcos, Lima Perú
Translation: Deborah Phillips
The Logic of Instability
Change is one of the main characteristics of the passage of time; change is movement and instability. Tania Bedriñana’s work is intrinsically related to this. On the one hand, the artist shows the need to express herself in an almost immediate way, relaying what she conceives. On the other hand, she has the consciousness that only the passage of time allows her to transform constantly the components of her work, as well as detailed treatment of material, in search of an inward logic.
Tania Bedriñana’s last three installations, “Grund”, “Ser/Res” and “Personanormal”, are composed of large cut-outs, painted using oil paint and emulsions, soaked and scraped off, all the while representing various parts of the human body (heads, trunks, arms, legs). These are arranged on a wall to create large-scale installations, in which elements are connected and form a palette of characters, which acquire a distinct personality. What appears takes on a life of its own while it takes shape according to different associations, contents and meanings. These installations are conceived as perpetual works-in-progress; they remain in a state of constant flux. When setting the installation up, new possibilities of assembly become apparent. For this reason, when the exhibition is finished, the pieces are carefully organized and kept in the artist’s studio, together, presenting the possibility that the same pieces could be, someday, re-assembled in another context as a different composition.
The use of treated cardboard, which is uniquely porous, allows Tania Bedriñana to create numerous finishes and textures where a heavily dilluted oil slides, and stains, scrapes and slight lines of drawing are impregnated. It is important to emphasize that there is a conscious rejection of the clear finish that is common in more classical painting. If a fragment presents a finish in which one can notice the intricacies of the lines, shades and lights, immediately it is turned over and what it is on the back becomes a new discovery that is inherent to her work: the paper is stained by oil, while there is also the stain of the first impulse of the hand on the paper. What is there is anything but coincidental.
Architectural space is, in this type of work, not only a frame or a background that contains the work of art, but, indeed, part and parcel of the composition, in an intimate dialogue that shapes the essence of the installation. The layout and the relationships between the characters also depend on where they are, and the walls form part of the work, incorporating the imperfections found in the surface. Stains on walls are not cleaned, but for example, are used like washes in a watercolour. Hollows form shapes, and lines appear through fragments of characters or objects. Forms manifest themselves almost by chance, only revealing their exactitude later.
These are intimate works that evoke feelings, images and memories that refer to human behaviour. Tania Bedriñana explores her personal experiences and, through the characters in her work, expresses her thoughts about stages of the mind and the way these processes influence human behaviour. To achieve this, she takes her memories, reality and fiction, scenes of aggression and vulnerability, infant memories, dreams and nightmares apart. Above all, however, feelings remain registered in her mind, as states of mind, like the feeling of disappearing, or fragility, or more tangible feelings like scars as a consequence, for example, of a tattoo or allergy. One sees, for example, a woman’s face with dirty combs on her head, conveying a sense of disgust or a woman biting an apple that it is placed in her hands, is associated with feelings of anxiety anxiety.
It is as if Tania Bedriñana was constructing a parallel world to show different private and personal aspects that survive everyday life, appearing from the surface of unconsciousness. She feels the need to exteriorize these aspects, trying to capture them at the very moment they emerge. Rather than the representation of a particular topic, it is about inaccurately defined experiences, subtle questions that remain registered, almost without noticing, in the body and the soul.