Felicidad Moreno, turns in the night
Elena Vozmediano, El Cultural, January 25, 2013

 

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Microcosm, cosmic painting, spatialism, infinite evocation of that galactic world that has always fascinated Felicidad Moreno, whose works we now see in Madrid. An exhibition that is a good plastic synthesis of her recent creative concerns and shows the artist’s interest in the indisputable permanence of painting-painting. 

It had been almost seven years since Felicidad Moreno (Toledo, 59) had exhibited in Madrid, and six since her last solo exhibition in Spain, which took place at the Museum of Fine Arts in Santander, closing a very active biennium in which she exhibited at the Galería Distrito 4, at the MUSAC in León and at the CAB in Burgos. Therefore, there was expectation. She has spent the last few years in London, where this new small format series -developed in her studio in Borox during 2011 and 2012- were produced. They are basically two series in which, with a predominance of black and white, she expands previous practices: the inclusion (not representation) of light and movement in painting. She has found poetic support in a phrase by Victor Hugo about the continuity of the “other dimensions” of reality and visuality (“The microscope begins where the telescope ends”) and the palindrome In girum imus comes to mind nocte et consumimur igni (“We roll around in the night and are consumed by fire”) for various reasons. 

In the first place, these works by Moreno confirm what was already sensed: hers is a non-linear trajectory, in which she revolves around some plastic constants. These paintings link with (channel) old works, from the second half of the 80s, featuring circular shapes and black. The circles are now footprints, made with the end of the roller in an operation that leaves a controlled margin at random and transfers to the fabric in a transparent way (even more evident in the second series, in which it directs the dripping of the enamel) a corporal choreography, a relationship between the artist and the work in which elemental physical properties such as force, mass and gravity come into play. The field on which they unfold is a geometric base that is progressively destroyed. 

The ”spinning,” which places us in a nocturnal environment, is also linked to the artist’s trajectory in her fixation with the spin, the whirlpool, the maelstrom that absorbs the gaze. In the last paintings that force becomes orbital, in cosmic configurations. As I pointed out before, the objective is to include light and movement. The movement is in the rotating dynamics of the compositions; regarding light, while on some occasions Moreno has used real, fluorescent lights, now white works as a pure flash, as a glow that has some electrical incandescence. Consumed by fire. 

In some of the paintings we see some color but in most of them it was already there. Palindrome ... and palimpsest. Felicidad Moreno tends to reuse canvases with failed works (her method implies a not so inconsiderable failure rate) and lets some areas show through. It is another way to go back, to go around, on your own steps, something you need to do in order not to lose your way, to know when a new series and new experimentation should start. 

In each set of works there is a sequentiality (less perceptible in the montage) and an encrypted, stellar or microbiological language, which is communicated through pulses (the circular flashes) and diagrams (the “curves” of the drippings). Stay aware of those mute and random messages.