THINKING OF HOME

Installation

Smallspace Gallery

Berlin

In Thinking of Home the artist places an oversized painting in the centre of the room. It shows a lurid, rough seascape. The passerby looks through the big window into the room onto the painting and the luminous, bright-orange horizon.

Valentina Torrado is interested in the dialogue with her audience. Like in the previous installation “Fließend” (shown at the Emil Nolde Foundation in Berlin in 2009) the artist uses her theoretical knowledge about optics and semiotics to create the sensation of water and sea. The choice of the monochrome, shrill coloring makes looking at the painting a real physical experience. The deeper one immerses oneself into the work the more it seems to gain momentum. The forms get blurry. They start to move, meandering between abstract and figurative shapes. It almost feels like being surrounded by waves and water. The viewer gets a sense of the artist’s longing for the sea, for her home, for Montevideo.

But the shrill coloring that reminds one of the bright lights of neon advertising does not allow nostalgic sentiments. Torrado breaks with the cliché of home as a place of longing and treats the classical depiction of seascapes with irony. The intensity of the color forces the viewer to turn away from the painting again and again. His eyes need to rest before he can immerse himself again into the sight. Torrado plays skillfully with her audience. She lures them into her dream of Uruguay and reminds them at the same time of the reality of the surrounding metropolis. And so the viewer, like the artist herself, becomes a traveler between worlds, between dream and reality.

Text_ Anna von Hahn

Acryl auf Leinwand

240 x 200 cm

2011