ILUSORIOS
PATRICIA READY GALLERY
SANTIAGO, CHILE, 2012

The oeuvre of Beatrice di Girolamo has evolved according to a rigorous and systematic program free of preconceived notions. In di Girolamo’s painted sculptures, the boundaries between what is pictorial and what is sculptural coexist in a space that is far removed from the controversies that afflicted the avant-gardes. Despite this, as I write this text, I find it important to speak more specifically about the nature of her efforts. Just now I used the term “painted sculptures,” and almost immediately it felt arbitrary. Yes, they are sculptures or perhaps more precisely they are reliefs, for they maintain a direct relationship with the wall. I will call them color reliefs, but even this term makes me uncomfortable, as though each one of these representations of her work abruptly denied the possibility of understanding it in its constant negotiation between painting and sculpture. Perhaps it would make more sense to define her body of work as “constructions”. With its generous ambiguity as well as its own history within the annals of art, this might very well be the most precise word.

We could invert terms and state that the artist creates paintings upon a complex three-dimensional support. The boundaries are not stable: the painting may surrender its space to the volume and color of the oak support or the opposite might occur, and volumetrics might be created or negated with the chromatic effects the artist creates. What we have here are optical tricks that add an extra degree of relativity to any category we might invent. In any event, do we really need to consider these works through the perspective of a label?