THE KARUSKIAN PEOPLE
About the works of "Spectres" ... By Noel Ulvaeus
Karin's objective is beauty. This goal [to aim beauty] is the MEANING of her works. It is the expression of what one looks for and gets. It is the victorious fight. The success conquered. Thus, it is not [in my humble opinion], BEAUTY the whole content of a Karuskian Digigravure, as some of the great ones [to whom I very much respect], in vigorous praises, had already proclaimed. Not even is [beauty] the most important. Each work of Karin Schwarz possesses, grouped in a single picture, history, chronology, time. Some offer us an itinerary that can run from the initial conflict till the climax and final result and [some] others concentrate on an emotion all phases of the history they tell. But always, and that is a remarkable characteristic [in Karin's work], history will be there creating the structure beauty needs to be [according to Karin] what it must be: Beautiful.
Beauty are pleasure, love, satisfaction, plenitude, God. [Beauty] Is what one wants, whatever it can be. It is the objective, where one are going to... For what one fights. But the objective does not exist without the way and vice-versa. It cannot have beauty without the fight. Karin Schwarz presents more than beauty. She presents the satisfaction of a wish.
[In Karin Schwarz] Colors must combine in absolute harmony, but must suggest there was a way to arrive to that completeness, to that beauty. The forms must be organic and harmonious, but guided in a systematic way. Satisfaction can exist, but it demands work. Thus, suavity, to exist, needs a method and discipline. Learning. Karin Schwarz studied exhaustively the technique she uses. She started developing her methodology during high school period and perfected it at college. After that she became a meticulous self-taught person (image softwares, electromagnetic spectrums, socialism). She imposed [to herself], following an almost military strictness, the task to reach technically in her works the idea of FREEDOM [as a value]. And the reached aesthetics is sublime and [not perfect] is real. It ALLUDES to dream, to the ideal, but set free from IMPOSSIBILITY and leans on the floor. It doesn’t intend to touch the unreachable. On the contrary, it makes an effort to reach freedom and beauty by way of truth. It rises against the easy beauty, symmetric and artificial and proposes [imposes] the idolatry for the maximum of beauty possible, the real beauty [from chance, from God]. For Karin the real beauty can’t be shown, just seen.
Me, in this book, couldn’t avoid following the dictates from this so secure and confident artist [rightly] and start to mention a series of personalities related to visual arts, digital painting, phylosophy, socialism. I couldn’t allow myself to make such an affront. I let to the reader’s discretion [in wanting it] to make a research [Marx, Zeno, Nietzsche, Kandinsky]... The work of this artist is, by nature, contestant, rebel and insolent. It wouldn’t be willingly to chose, myself, phrases and thoughts of the mentioned “recognized figures” (by whom? As Karin would say...) trying to situate the work of the artist.
Each one of the series presented in this book bring, with more or less intensity, certain tendencies and characteristics present in the whole artistic-philosophical work of this fascinating [South] American artist:
Obs.: Every time one tries to divide the works of an artist in groups and collections mistakes are made, and here it wouldn’t be different. I’ll try to make a division based, mainly, on the inspirations, the philosophical circumstances proposed and the psychological contents present. I beg pardon to the reader and, above all, to the artist, the casual discordances (and even discrepancies) here present...
In Bad Girls and Lesbos’s Spectres the beauty is the pleasure, the peace. The fight are: in the abstract plan, the pre-established concepts, the need to keep away from values. In the physical plan, the flesh, the weight, the body.
What one sees in Florals and Fashion and Body is the beauty [the aesthetic], painfully reached in which, [at the beginning] would be [unquestionably] beautiful. There is the strong need to transfigure the standard beauty (pretty women, flowers) and to REPAIR their beauty. There is the need to show the REAL beauty that exists into the traditional beauty, terminating this one. It is the preconception which falls to the ground to give room to the freedom to interpret what the Beauty would be.
The Geometrics are an exhibition of Karin’s mathematics and technical specialization. The fight [for freedom] is strongly showed in those works. It is like we were in the phase of war. Peace didn’t arrive yet and it’s aesthetical beauty can only be glimpsed among the hard lines of guerrilla. Hope. The promise present in each battle (in each work). Those are works that represent purely the fight and hope of the faithful fighter who, though not having reached the objective, imagines it in exactness.
In the whole series Spectator’s Topography and also in Altered States Karin offers us a CLOSE-UP of the fighting warrior. It is the being who wishes the beauty, the peace. The one who observes and analyses a goal. It is the alive being (human or not) fighting for what keeps him alive. It is its truest face. And its expression shows, at the same time, the disposition for war and the desire for Peace. It is Karin’s face. Her expression, her spirit.
Organics and Triads deal with phases of the artist in which she turns towards the transcendental. The fight, the victory, the beauty, the physical are questioned. Death is seen as a reality. It is a mature phase, where the real presents itself in the crudest form. The end isn’t possible for a conscience (Socrates said). So what is there? We are dealing with the meeting of the artist and the responsibility of the artist. And it’s impossible to make answers. One can just suggest them.
Following with my inconsequent division, I’ll talk about the works included in Miscellaneous. They are Digigravures in which the artist, democrat and justice and freedom-seeking, certifies that the difference, the individuality and freedom of being what one is, are NECESSARY. The sweet curves and colors. The smooth texture and the intriguing junction between mathematical and organic elements are like the life. They have self existence. Freedom. Thus appears the necessity to stand out from the proposed series certain elements which are differentiated of the rest, not withdrawing the group. Maybe they are leaders, maybe social excluded, maybe artists, in the Karuskian people.
Moreover, so is any artist... a world, a nation. Their works are always a crowd of people to be observed, devoured and consumed. To be an artist is to abdicate. It is to serve. It is to feel like supplying [to whom has courage] concepts, ideas, ideals. To give oneself up to criticism and suffer, die, grow up with it. To live.
Noel Ulvaeus
2005
--------- x ---------
Noel Ulvaeus is a philosopher and art critic.
fonte:
[presentation text on the art book "Spectres" by Karin Schwarz]
