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Renata
Fernandez
(@ Saatchi Online Gallery) Venezuelan - born, based in London |
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 I couldn't Kiss You Good Bye, I couldn't Tell I Love You. The London Bombings. 7/7 2005. Charcoal, pastel and acrylic on paper. 94 x 154cm Personal statement by the Artbust owner (2008): "Renata shares her birthday with Picasso! No wonder that she makes herself suffer more than necessary. Her art is outstanding and unique, but as always the artist follows the wrong traces. We hope it may turn out fine, but Artbust, which had featured her for 5 years, has a different view. Renata Fernandez is one of our outstanding artists - and will always be. Personally as every Scorpio she is difficult to approach although charming in the first place. We nicked her "Langustino" ! Her above answer to the London bombings is an outstanding piece of work, which hardly had been acknowledged (see press release). Her period of dark and strong colours or charcoal drawings is over? Now she writes a pastel language, with shades of even pink and an lovely yellow. This developed in consequence of the 2005 drawing "Reconstruction of Rescued Girl" (below) and "I want to be" (also below), which bases on a photo taken in the Afghanistan war by a friend of ours." (artbust, Joe Bohne) Here are some of her latest works of 2008:
In Fernandez' work the crucial factor is the Power of Transformation, which starts with making use of any materials or ready-made images available, adapting her own skills in the process, to make tangible the "suggestions" of these materials or found images. Like her culture, her work is one of forced integration, no planned transformation. It is the generous touch of the synchronicity and serendipity.
 Tropical Garden of Eden. ink, charcoal, acrylic, oil on plywood, varnish, artificial tree. 2005. 1.80 x 6 x 0.5 m Fernandez says she practices the strategy
of need, a process of permanent adaptation, where 'style' doesn't
seem to be relevant (as a style that would be recognisable as
her permanent signature). In Fernandez there are constant preoccupati Fernandez moved to London in 2003, after years of 'therapy' in the country side. That year she was awarded a solo show in the 198 Gallery. Fernandez recycles and revisits ideas and generates derivative images from her own work. Sometimes a friend would pose for her and a new line of work emerges at the same time while the press still gives her some inspiration, such the London bombings drawing, of I Want to be, based on a photo of a soldier at the beginning of the Irak invasion. Rejecting any other interpretation, Fernandez
frequently wonders that by taking images and materials by random
she is just responding to our shared, basic subjacent collective
subconscious.
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PERSONAL STATEMENT @ Artbust: "My work is figurative. But the figure is an excuse, the chosen element (chosen by random) is to create formal problems. I assemble images from ready-made sources (papers, for instance) and work them until exhaustion. The same treatment is applied to any given material: textiles, timber, etc I can say that one of my preoccupations is SEMIOTICS: by taking upon an given image, or material, and working them until exhaustion creating formal problems, I pretend to extract, or find out the reason why the image or material first caught my attention, and if such reason lies upon the underlying collective subconscious. Usually such image or material becomes the subject of a series, effectively creating "islands" of subject matters in my work, that I visit or re-visit in time to time: the soldier, the Garden of Eden, the walk in the park, velvet, fences, etc. They comprise my ever growing imaginary, and sometimes mixed together creating a complete new subject. The viewer might think that there is a narrative intention in my work just because I make use of the figure. My approach actually is quite detached, and more often than not I care little about the possible personal emotional content of a work. My objective is to generate the right circumstances to encourage the viewer's own interpretations. Given the opportunity, I would rather ask questions to the viewer regarding my work rather than answer. In this process of apparent deception, tittles are often long and incongruous. Above all, I reject any further interpretation. At the end, in my work what matters
is the power of transformation, THE MAKING, during which I adapt
my own skills in the process, to make tangible the "suggestions"
made to me by images and materials (where would they take me?).
This process of apparent "exhaustion" of the subject
matter is one of forced integration, no planned transformation,
hence each work's own hermeneutic. I must add the importance
of the generous touch of synchronicity and serendipity. Although
my work is "organised" in series, each phase (object)
would ideally stand on its own, both conceptually and as an object." "What I have been doing
lately is trying to find a common ground between the different
disciplines I am expressing myself: drawing, painting and sculpture.
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Born
in Venezuela, of Spanish parents Fernandez studied Fine Arts
in the IUESAPAR, in Caracas. For five years she had the opportunity
to receive all-round art education, following in the then new
school's holistic approach towards art and art education in general.
This first group or art students were lectured in post-modern
philosophy and ethics, art history, opera, theatre and even anthropology.
Fernandez considers these years the most important in her formal
education.
ons, such as the way she deal
with materials and a certain visual code, certain elements and
imaginary that keeps reappearing. By mixing up disparate elements
or images, Fernandez seeks a unit of meaning, by way of producing
an unique hermeneutic that would emerge from each piece.material and content ©1996/2008
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