CARMEN PASTRANA_NATURALEZAS MUERTAS 10/06/2022
CARMEN PASTRANA_STILL LIFES
As we connect with the world that new technologies offer us, we are disconnecting from our own real life, from the people around us, from everything we should accompany, love and care for, in a process of empathic devastation that we still don´t know what consequences it will have, but which is establishing relationships in which the centre is our own ego and other people are only valued for what they give us.
Fernando Gómez de la Cuesta. Excerpt from the text "Ensimismados".
Although new technologies are tools which, when used appropriately and responsibly, can provide great value in areas such as the transmission and search for information, communication, work, learning or leisure, their misuse and/or abuse has the opposite effect to that desired; over-stimulation, inhibition, social isolation, perception of false realities, confusion, addiction. To what extent are these new digital media separating us from the palpable, physical, social or environmental reality, to what extent are the new technologies changing our view of the world and our perception of reality, and are we aware of the degree of dependence to which we are subjected by a manifestly manipulative and alienating system, over which we have absolutely no control, but quite the opposite?
Naturalezas Muertas is a small exhibition that condenses the recent work of Carmen Pastrana and invites us on a critical journey through the reflections of an artist in search of answers. In her works, virtual reality glasses are the protagonists, an element that provides great symbolic force by highlighting the dichotomy of our gaze. Through them we put our attention on something that is not in our physical space; we look beyond, we create worlds adapted to us, where our consciousness can develop or, on the contrary, disappear.
Throughout my entire career there has always been a constant thought in the background, it is the concern about where I or we place our gaze, our attention, and what we can create with it. Perhaps we can create something different within this new common and directed reality, this new "still life" that appears before us, even so we should be able to generate new inner senses to be able to observe the other universes that inhabit us, that bring us closer to higher levels of our consciousness.
This series, which began in 2019 with "Ensimismados", is completed with new works that delve into the intricacies of human nature and its capacity for introspection. And we perceive, once again, the power of art as a means of reflection and transformation, which forces us to think and rethink life and to position ourselves before it. Through her exquisite drawings and paintings, Carmen Pastrana invites us to enter into aseptic and apparently comfortable scenes, of a serenity and beauty without limits, and delivers us to the reality of a world that seems happy, but that, deep down, is lacking in life, at least as we knew it.
Carmen Pastrana (Madrid, 1967) has a degree in Fine Arts from the Complutense University of Madrid. In 1999 she moved to New York for a period of eight years, where she had several exhibitions, including solo shows at Fish Tank Gallery, Penalver Studio and White Box Gallery. In 2007 he received a grant from NYArts to work in his studios in Beijing. At the end of his stay in China he returns to Madrid where he works in his studio in the Art Centre El Jacalito. He currently lives and works between Madrid and Palma de Mallorca. In 2013 he participated in the Biennial of the South of Panama, making a mural of 20×8 meters in the Plaza de la Catedral in that city. Throughout her career she has been awarded prizes in several painting competitions, including the Casimiro Sáinz, the Certamen de Artes Plásticas El Brocense and the Salón de Otoño de Madrid. Her work is present in important collections, both private and institutional, including the Diputación de Cáceres, The David Dawes Nee Foundation, the Fundación Antonio Camuñas and the Fundación Amigos de Madrid.
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