Paraísos perdidos
Solo show by Carmen Mazarrasa
Paraísos perdidos
Solo show by Carmen Mazarrasa
25 November - 23 December 2021
Credits
Silvia Ortiz
Elena Feduchi
Like good animals, we have always sought shelter: in a cave, in an igloo, under a bridge, in houses made of adobe, stone or brick. In these shelters, safe from other animals and the elements, we have made fire and created a home.
Warmth, family, childhood, fears, laughter, love, loneliness, desires, all put into that blender made to our measure: THE HOUSE.
El Chico presents Paraísos Perdidos, the first solo exhibition of the artist Carmen Mazarrasa (Madrid, 1980), an exhibition that immerses us into a very particular way of the domestic, recreating miniature scenarios that bring back the memory of her childhood. The dolls house that her mother gave her when she was 6 years old, and which over time has undergone numerous additions and transformations – like a house that is always under construction– is the central object of her work. A house full of objects, made with the precision and delicacy of her own hands, allowing the human eye to look through the different rooms, producing a clash of realities, of the minuscule in this case, which awakens the mystery that always inhabits the change of scale.
Carmen Mazarrasa sits day by day among different materials and paintings to construct another reality, and not a copy of the existing reality, in a work of archaeology of memory, in an eagerness to rescue sensations, atmospheres, lights and interior landscapes that are no longer there. As if the past could bring a certain refuge to an uncertain future. Each object that she holds firmly between her fingers is created to the smallest detail so that it breathes, so that it lives; they are not intended for inert life. Lamps, works of art, comfortable armchairs and sofas, fruit, books, carpets, blinds that go up and down, vases, flowers that are watered, Greek ceramics... They all speak because the artist cannot help it.
It happens that there is as much infinite life towards the smallest, the microscopic, as there is towards the largest, the infinite universe. And in the creation of a minuscule universe, the artist seems to perceive a certain illusion of control, a suspicion that perhaps in these objects she finds another measure (or disproportion), which may even lead us to another arrangement of time. An act of rebellion with no room for conventional dimensions and time.Carmen arrives at this exhibition full of lost paradises, corners made on her own existential scale, to make us think about the measure of our desires, of human experience and also to enjoy her newly found paradises for us.
Carmen Mazarrasa's miniatures have been seen in recent years through her profile @casa_mazarrasa on Instagram, which has been visited by big names in the art world such as the artist Tracy Emin and the art critic Jerry Saltz, among others. In April 2021, The Observer, a Sunday edition of the English newspaper The Guardian, published an interview where you can learn more about her work.
This group of works presented by EL CHICO gallery does not end with this exhibition; later, they will be subjected to a performative process that will be recorded to surprise us all. Stay tuned!
Warmth, family, childhood, fears, laughter, love, loneliness, desires, all put into that blender made to our measure: THE HOUSE.
El Chico presents Paraísos Perdidos, the first solo exhibition of the artist Carmen Mazarrasa (Madrid, 1980), an exhibition that immerses us into a very particular way of the domestic, recreating miniature scenarios that bring back the memory of her childhood. The dolls house that her mother gave her when she was 6 years old, and which over time has undergone numerous additions and transformations – like a house that is always under construction– is the central object of her work. A house full of objects, made with the precision and delicacy of her own hands, allowing the human eye to look through the different rooms, producing a clash of realities, of the minuscule in this case, which awakens the mystery that always inhabits the change of scale.
Carmen Mazarrasa sits day by day among different materials and paintings to construct another reality, and not a copy of the existing reality, in a work of archaeology of memory, in an eagerness to rescue sensations, atmospheres, lights and interior landscapes that are no longer there. As if the past could bring a certain refuge to an uncertain future. Each object that she holds firmly between her fingers is created to the smallest detail so that it breathes, so that it lives; they are not intended for inert life. Lamps, works of art, comfortable armchairs and sofas, fruit, books, carpets, blinds that go up and down, vases, flowers that are watered, Greek ceramics... They all speak because the artist cannot help it.
It happens that there is as much infinite life towards the smallest, the microscopic, as there is towards the largest, the infinite universe. And in the creation of a minuscule universe, the artist seems to perceive a certain illusion of control, a suspicion that perhaps in these objects she finds another measure (or disproportion), which may even lead us to another arrangement of time. An act of rebellion with no room for conventional dimensions and time.Carmen arrives at this exhibition full of lost paradises, corners made on her own existential scale, to make us think about the measure of our desires, of human experience and also to enjoy her newly found paradises for us.
Carmen Mazarrasa's miniatures have been seen in recent years through her profile @casa_mazarrasa on Instagram, which has been visited by big names in the art world such as the artist Tracy Emin and the art critic Jerry Saltz, among others. In April 2021, The Observer, a Sunday edition of the English newspaper The Guardian, published an interview where you can learn more about her work.
This group of works presented by EL CHICO gallery does not end with this exhibition; later, they will be subjected to a performative process that will be recorded to surprise us all. Stay tuned!