Mercedes Girona: Merging Painting, Jewelry Making, and Photography
Lizzetta LeFalle-Collins || [ CURATORIAL STATEMENT ] use compass to view walls
Curatorial statement
Mercedes Girona's paintings have been associated with that of male painters because of the large scale of the work and also the force and confidence in attitude when she puts brush to canvas. Like American painter, Mary Lovelace O'Neal who has been described as painting like a man, Mercedes, who is Spanish and lives in Barcelona, is fearless when entering the large space of her paintings. Mercedes is also a photographer and a silversmith. Shapes in her paintings are refined and crafted in her silver jewelry that she presents in exhibitions along with her paintings. She shoots photographs to help her arrive at the abstract shapes in her paintings and jewelry and as a photographer, she merges the painted images with her silver jewelry shapes, overlaying them, creating yet another format to present her images. Merging the fine art of abstract paintings with the jewelry forms that are often contextualized as craft can be tricky if one views these two path in art as separate, never to be appreciated together--somehow suggesting that one form is of less importance because it's function is more understandable than the others' (one is worn as adornment while the other adorns one's wall). Because a painting is appreciated as part of the furnishings and even static in the place that it inhabits on the wall, it becomes a part of place as opposed to a part of person, as in the case of jewelry. Does it matter where adornment takes place? Have not western eyes redefined the adornments of many non-western cultures so that they now are embraced as works of art, hung on walls, placed on pedestals and covered with vitrines, static and yielding great sums of money? Throughout history, money has always been entwined with the making and exhibition of art and whether deemed art or craft, skillful or an enlightened use of materials, the thing that matters is that an object of fine art or craft speaks to the viewer and engages our senses. Therefore Mercedes' intertwining and overlaying photographs of her paintings with her jewelry serves to topple stringent ways of seeing and offers an alternative viewing experience, merging fine art and fine craft into experimental photography.
This gallery of Mercedes' work suggests a progressive way of viewing artwork, a more lateral way of thinking that encourages us to be courageous in seeing things how they might be rather than the way they've always been presented. These are the challenges inherent in creating and presenting art--the subject calls for solutions, especially those that create real social value in improving the visual literacy of our viewers.
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Mercedes Girona's paintings have been associated with that of male painters because of the large scale of the work and also the force and confidence in attitude when she puts brush to canvas. Like American painter, Mary Lovelace O'Neal who has been described as painting like a man, Mercedes, who is Spanish and lives in Barcelona, is fearless when entering the large space of her paintings. Mercedes is also a photographer and a silversmith. Shapes in her paintings are refined and crafted in her silver jewelry that she presents in exhibitions along with her paintings. She shoots photographs to help her arrive at the abstract shapes in her paintings and jewelry and as a photographer, she merges the painted images with her silver jewelry shapes, overlaying them, creating yet another format to present her images. Merging the fine art of abstract paintings with the jewelry forms that are often contextualized as craft can be tricky if one views these two path in art as separate, never to be appreciated together--somehow suggesting that one form is of less importance because it's function is more understandable than the others' (one is worn as adornment while the other adorns one's wall). Because a painting is appreciated as part of the furnishings and even static in the place that it inhabits on the wall, it becomes a part of place as opposed to a part of person, as in the case of jewelry. Does it matter where adornment takes place? Have not western eyes redefined the adornments of many non-western cultures so that they now are embraced as works of art, hung on walls, placed on pedestals and covered with vitrines, static and yielding great sums of money? Throughout history, money has always been entwined with the making and exhibition of art and whether deemed art or craft, skillful or an enlightened use of materials, the thing that matters is that an object of fine art or craft speaks to the viewer and engages our senses. Therefore Mercedes' intertwining and overlaying photographs of her paintings with her jewelry serves to topple stringent ways of seeing and offers an alternative viewing experience, merging fine art and fine craft into experimental photography.
This gallery of Mercedes' work suggests a progressive way of viewing artwork, a more lateral way of thinking that encourages us to be courageous in seeing things how they might be rather than the way they've always been presented. These are the challenges inherent in creating and presenting art--the subject calls for solutions, especially those that create real social value in improving the visual literacy of our viewers.
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