CRISTINA LUCAS (Jaén, 1973)
From February 9 to March 25, 2012
The exhibition presented by Cristina Lucas bears the title “Delinquere”, which means to abandon, to move away from the right path, to further oneself from the lawful track. The show’s main axis is the video “HACIA LO SALVAJE” (16 minutes) 2011. In this work, a young woman decides, on her own accord, to submit herself to a legal process that ends in the desintegration of all social bonds.
Radically oposed to this woman are the naked characters which are contemplated through classical paintings, and exhibited at large museums. The conflict lies here in the lack of permission to do a “natural” gesture as is the detachment of clothing. The mechanisms that the Museum, as an institution, applies to this performance become part of a cultural contradiction. There is a legal loophole for the presence of an actual naked body in front of a painted or sculpted one.
The documentation of the performance reconciles again this conflict, in the series NUDE AT THE MUSEUM, which consists so far of five different interventions, which have been made at: Walker Art Gallery (Liverpool), Louvre Museum, El Prado, Kröller-Müller (Netherlands) and Museo Nacional de arte Antiga (Lisbon).
The rest of the series from the exhibition make reference to the conflict between the natural body and the social body, as is shown in the series PEINADOS…where hair, used as an expression of the savage, is transformed for the representation of sexual, power or rebellious roles.
In the series MONTAÑAS we can observe the radical transformation of romantic icons. Nature as seen through economics, the triumphant discipline of the illustrated science that is dominating the landscape of our planet; capitalizing and sistematizing its elements. Creating artificial landscapes, so that it is impossible to escape to the mountains, as they have become stock. Mountains no longer obey to geology. They morph, erode and migrate according to stock markets.
In the Homocene, the transformation of the natural into the artificial occurs by osmosis, so perhaps Art is the only vehicle that allows us to live in its contradictions.
Delinquere… the abandonment of the righteous path as an existential routine, becomes the orthodox way in which to procede.