‘Desmadre’ art exhibition shows destructive force of nature

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Desmadre No. 9
Desmadre No. 9

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he Bogotá-based Galería El Museo is fanning the creative flames with “Desmadre,” a new show by María Cristina Cortés. The exhibition turns up the heat on its curatorial vision and visual mastery of the invited artists.

[infobox title=’If you go’]What
“Desmadre” by María Cristian Córtes

When
Through May 13
9 a.m.-7 p.m. M-F
11 a.m.-7 p.m. Sa

Where
Galeria El Museo
Calle 81 No. 11-41

More Info
www.galeriaelmuseo.com[/infobox]

Since the beginning of her career, Cortés has built a close relationship with her immediate surroundings — the savanna of Bogotá. In Chambas she focused on floating objects in sometimes murky and polluted water. In more recent works, such as Rastrojal (2008) and Quebrantos (2010), half-burned logs and charred tree trunks make an appearance.

Something that characterizes Cortés’ work is constant experimentation, both regarding the angles she adopts to watch and compose, as well as the materials used, resulting in a collage and the insertion of black and white where color once prevailed.

At the El Museo Gallery show one is surrounded by crackling fires. On the walls, powerful images of a forest in flames remind us of Turner and his twilight views of the Thames. The paintings are also timely, as man-caused fires burned for three days this year along the Cerros Orientales, engulfing Bogotá in smog and covering the south of the capital in ash.

In an adjacent room, change is abrupt. If we were feeling hot with the destructive advance of fire, we are now cold. In exchange of flames, viewers are immersed in a quiet, post-apocalyptic flood plain. Paintings depict vast expanses of still water from which roofs, fragments of a city and foliage emerge.

In these, the silencing of life resonates, but there is loss and abandonment. A hurricane has passed, but the shock and hopelessness prevails.

The paintings of María Cristina Cortés force us to reflect on the power of fire and voracity of water in Desmadre. “Desmadrado” according to a dictionary, is one who has been abandoned by a mother. Desmadre signifying “out of control” — a river bursting its banks, encroaching flames, urban sprawl.

While the theme of the exhibition is nature’s chaos and which we are subject to everyday from climate change calamities to powerful earthquakes, Cortés’ work is very much in control, revealing a profound knowledge of art; from the mediums used, to the artist’s constant search of different moments in art history.

There is a refined approached to the pictorial surface. Canvasses are intervened with printing methods and the overwhelming force which emanates is the result of black on the base fabric.

Sometimes realistic, sometimes abstract, Desmadre reveals an artist as master of pastels and a medium she has resorted to frequently since her early days in the Savannah of Bogotá. Her current exhibition smolders with critical-acclaim.

The prestigious gallery also invited two other Colombian artists to show their most recent works – Lina Sinisterra and her El silencio del color (The silence of color) and Sebastián Camacho with a miniature series titled Capas (Layers). These works will be reviewed soon. The collective is open to the public until May 13 and admission is free.

Additional reporting by art writer Marta Rodríguez.

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