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*1975 in Santiago, Chile/žije a pracuje v Paříži, Fr/www.franciscasanchez.cl

vzdělaní/rezidence
2006-2008/ La Seine postgraduate program, Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts Paris, France //2008/ Micro residencias Parasit(i)o, galería parásito/MeetFactory. Prague, Czech Republic Between us… Miss China Beauty,Paris, France; Ahmedabad, India. collaboration between NID (National Institute of Design) and La Seine //2007/ Mongin Art studios Seoul, South Korea, collaboration between KNUA (Korean National University of Arts) and La Seine //2006-2007/ Cité Internationale des Arts. Paris, France //2004 –2006/ Ateliers, Stichting Ateliers 63, Postgraduate program. Amsterdam, The Netherlands //1998-2003/ Sculpture Diploma, University of Chile //1993 –1997/ Anthropology Diploma. University of Chile.

samostatné výstavy
2008/ Waterfall  2X2projects. Amsterdam, The Nehterlands //2007/ Fe Ciega Galería Gabriela Mistral. Santiago, Chile //2006/ Offspring de ateliers. Amsterdam, The Netherlands //2003/ Examen y Cartón Centro Cultural de España. Santiago, Chile.

                    

  
foto: Pavla Ortová a Tomáš Souček
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"When I whistle my head deflates".
On Sculpture and flying objects
(malý virtuálny rozhovor mezi Francisca Sánchez a María Berríos)

Last August I bumped into María Berríos in Amsterdam. One afternoon she commented my catalogue Fe Ciega (Blind Faith), and I was impressed by her understanding of sculpture as research and the importance and need of readdressing certain “banal” issues. Later I read a conversation between María and the sculptor Misha Stroj, I was drawn to the way they conceived the sculpting process and by the format and focus of their collaboration. I wrote María asking to be included in this dialogue. We agreed to initiate a new phase of this conversation, I sent her a short statement, which she commented. This was the first of an ongoing e-mail ping pong aimed at contextualizing my microresidency work, parasiting my own artistic production. The present text is the result of this exchange. A first cut of our virtual conversation by correspondence on the sculptural aspect of things.

F:  I like the idea of bringing a waterfall and a mountain into a gallery, making the room shine with falling beams. Taking over the world by filling it with things.
M: The interest in sculpture as research has to do with the potential of each “creation” as a methodology for understanding those things that cannot exist in any other way. I agree with the creationist manifesto when it insists on the invention of a new phenomenon, but I disagree with Huidobro when he states that these creations are unworldly, or beyond our realm. I think the opposite is true: the new phenomenon immediately becomes a part of the world, creating an expanded and reformated reality. All because of this very small new component, that is not at all detached from, but a newly born format of being in the world.
I think the artist must insist on filling the real with new creations, proudly thrusting objects into the world… this is the positive stubbornness of the artists attitude. Not to be mistaken with the celebration of the early twentieth century drunken-bohemian artist figure, distanced from his own work as if it were unimportant, thrusting his ouvre into the world in an irresponsible way. I find the contemporary version of this figure the cool-and-careless highly educated but nonchalantly indifferent artist profoundly boring.
I see this stubbornness, for example, in your waterfall: I remember laughing while you described you wading in the ocean with your camera, the water swirling around your legs soaking your rolled up jeans, while trying to take pictures of the moving water. That need to observe, take apart and cut up different forms and images of water trying to discover the mystery (in this case the waterly-ness of water, its sculptural secret). Even though you were aware you probably wouldn’t find it, but still obsessed with creating an experiment that could take you a little bit closer.

F: Yes, but it was impossible! The water moved all over the place. Sculpture is a very clumsy medium for captivating animated, immaterial or lightness, and it is this discomfort that intrigues me, the fatality of the solid form. I was trying to create a system that would allow the water to flow into my camera, find a formula that could objectify the qualities of the water phenomenon into mater.
M: I agree with the fact that sculpture is in itself quite clumsy, there is nothing more awkward that a nineteenth century monument, that for example failed to acquire the desired “movement” or “rhythm”. Huge bulks that are more difficult to disassemble than to move somewhere less bothersome (in our context, where Rodin is considered a pervert, the history of public monuments is basically the tragic story of these constant displacements).
Discomfort and clumsiness can be considered fundamental sculptural issues, but this is especially true in a work like yours (this you have in common with Stroj). Though this discomfort also has to do with never completely reaching a fixed form, as if your sculptures are had arbitrarily stood still, and that at any given moment they could decide to move around a little and adjust themselves.

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F: But the starting point is that sculpture is solid and the question is, in this case, how to make liquid turn solid, how to make solid gas, solid hair… Today no one, or very few, would sculpt a beard in stone. But at some point not only was it possible, but everyone was doing this! Stone beards could be found all over! When I think of this I always wonder how I would face the problem, how I would try and summarize all that tiny hair. How to hair without the hair. Of course the starting point would be that there is no way no use real hair, no wax museum cheating. The curls must be solid, a beard as an object.
M: The power of sculpture could very well be its brutality, or at least one of its powers, but there is also a sort of illusionism at play. When a sculpture makes something work it does so in a very material way: a new thing is placed in the world.  It is a big responsibility. That is what made me think –in the first round of this dialogue on the sculpturalness of research– of the secret desire the artist has of colonizing world with his or her “creations”. When Francisca the sculptor wants to make the object beard, I am positive the result will be completely different form the stone beard you recalled and admired: immediately I imagine a lonely beard, standing on its own, demanding to be its own pedestal. You are implacable and obstinate with the doubts that animate your “creations”, but they themselves are very self-righteous and proud, they are aware of their uniqueness and, no matter how precarious and flimsy, they seem quite ready and willing to rule the world…

F: The way the baroque artists decided that light was not only solid, but long gold rods. But why concrete? And, why define light by direction? Light sculptures have a narration; they come from somewhere and go somewhere else. The rays, that are at the same time sign and ornament, change meaning if they are springing form cloud in ground direction or if they burst out of a head in all directions. I find these irrational images accepted with absolute rationality very amusing.
M: That is also a fascinating aspect of the exercise of sculptural power. In your “potentials”, we are surprised by dry grey plaster being used to think about the sculptural element of light. A very concrete piece of evidence of the utopian possibilities of plaster, like Manheimm would say: “a state is utopian when it is incongruent with the reality within which it occurs”. Though he is speaking of the utopian state of mind, here it would be more accurate to speak of the realization of a utopian materiality: an magic act where plaster turns into light. Sculpture has that going for itself, the ability to realize things in a very concrete way. Always with a little cheating involved, because supposedly to be sculpture it should anyway be in itself a material thing.

F: I also like to think about sculpture and violence. What if a Church’s light rays would fall and strike someone. I like to think of the brutality of sculpture’s physical existence. This is why I asked Silvina to push the plaster light sculpture “potentials” the day they took down the exhibition, sitting at home I saw the video of the rod falling and heard it hitting the ground.
M: Always sneaking in those strange religious references! But I like that contradiction between the transcendental act (of a divine ray of light hitting someone on the head) and the reenactment ritual of falling over. Sculpture strikes back! I am sure your light-rod was very eager to knock someone down. So we have a title for our next virtual small talk: Sculptural manifestos here and now (and not in the hereafter).