Pictorial work

We are lying on the grass. Up above us there is a tall and luxurious palm tree with some of its dry leaves falling over its trunk. As background the sun covered by an almost distinguishable fog. The wind rocks the dry leaves to and fro. The sun goes through them. With half-closed eyes we see those yellow blades cut the sky. It is comforting to imagine that these elements can be put together to bring about a certain sense. Nature is enrapturing in itself, but the order the artist hand instills uncovers a new meaning to its existence.

A year ago when the woods burned because of the acute and prolonged drought, we lost something that was there for us. Then came the trek across the leveled woods by the flames and the sensation that from this devastated landscape something remained: the trace of the existence of nature, transformed by fire. Not far form there the calcareous terrain is furrowed by rain water that also fell abundantly and also left its cast.

Eroded earth, water, fire, wind. Ofelia Iszaevich*s work that integrates this exhibition is the sensitive vision of these four synthesized elements.

Between the pulp of the fiber and the dead leaves, on the torn barks, over the skin of the ground, the artist starts creating an esthetic sense. It is the elegy, the field sensation after the battle of the elements. It is the sense of the wealth and abundance transformed into its minimal essence. The frail sparkle of a world that lives on when every other thing has disappeared. Pure essence devoid of accidents. Color and texture are the only information that our visual experience registers.

Some years ago Ofelia Iszaevich resorted to painting to communicate the esthetic sense of the energy of the earth. The painted forms were an extension of nature, following its own rhythm, stressing the coupling of textures and lights. The solidity of the stone, the transparence of its marmoreal streaks invited to touch the surface with hands and eyes.

From then on, that mineral kingdom which appeared in her paintings gave way to vegetation in her collages. Textures became more reticular and exquisite. Her painting suffered mimesis and the manual cast of her craft in making paper, agglutinating fibers, weaving the surface, lay out instead. From painting Ofelia jumped into sculptured relieve, the terrain topography. What stands out in this exhibition is the journey walked from the two dimensions which her paintings had towards the volume of the series of relieves with fibers, the oil pigment towards the vibration of color that emerges naturally from the materials.

I had the privilege of being in Ofelia's studio. Occasion, which allowed me to see the genesis of her works and penetrate into her warp. There I saw the magnificent fan which made me reconcile with the desolate landscape that surrounds the valley of Mexico. I saw and was convinced of the authenticity of her plastic arguments and I left enriched with this experience, feeling that Ofelia has created a vehicle which has made us recognize our true nature.

In the most recent works that I saw in the studio, the artist gives the next step, this time towards the animal kingdom. The forms * waving spirals, concavities and projections * represent the structure of living bodies. Forms that speak of deliberate and mechanical movements, action of those forms to fulfill its biological function. Textures that generate from the function to create its own organic form. For the artist to create those forms with fibers and agglutinates is to discover her own interior. Characteristic that defines all her artistic production. Ofelia creates exteriors, which reveal her insides.

The fascination that emerges from contemplating these pieces takes me to an ineffable world; a place where leaves are more than natural objects, they are visual poetry that grasp the sound of things, as the words of the poet that mimic the sounds of water or the vibration of the musical notes that enclose a feeling. Lyric work, song to the earth and its inhabitants, matter of remembrances which outcrop to sight; this work cannot be explained in words, it must be felt, it must be experienced as we feel nostalgia or tranquility.

During the last thirty years, since Ofelia Iszaevich started painting, it has been difficult for the public to understand the many meanings of abstraction in the visual arts. Maybe because of the appearance of the mass media communication and the dulling of narrative images -- which even though they seem to say something, very few times they do or their message results superficial * the public has lost its ability to contemplate what is natural. We see the pieces as Abstraction (as genre and ism) and it is difficult to admit that that abstraction is not something which is really natural.

Our difficulty as subjects exposed to Art takes root in that we cannot see ourselves as a unit with what it is before our eyes; that we only see styles and schools that fragment our perception. Before such difficulties, it is risky for an artist to propose to his or her contemporaries a deeper vision of life on pain of being ill interpreted. Lastly, Ofelia's artistic life dangles on a thread; that thread is her link with herself, her will of remaining loyal and honest to herself, no matter what the philistines say or think.

Precisely because Ofelia is still determined in carrying on with her vision of the whole (in which Nature, space and action take place) that her work must be seen. Through it we can recognize what is still common to us.

José Manuel Springer. México D.F., febrero, 1999