Maggie Cardelús
17 Mar - 30 Apr 2011
MAGGIE CARDELÚS
Bright Flashes and Unreachable Things
17 March - 30 April, 2011
Galeria Fucares Madrid announces its fifth show of Spanish/American artist Maggie Cardelus (Virginia, USA, 1962) in which she continues her exploration of the family photographic album. In this show the artist has expanded the photographic album to include the universe itself, as it unfolds in the domestic. A few women artists and writers have been working out how to be a mother and develop their art in a self-conscious way since the 1960’s. Maggie Cardelus is proposing a way to be in this world as both artist and mother, sacrificing neither.
In order for the mother/artist to survive, she must transform her world, however small, into the entire universe and more. She knows, of course, that this is an illusion, a strategy, a survival mechanism. She knows, of course, that all artists/all people at all times participate in their own seduction at the hands of their chosen passion, hobby, occupation, obsession, belief, whatever gives meaning and heft to their lives.
Has the artist succeeded in her alchemy?
Has she succeeded in transforming a fruit bowl into an ovary, a cluster of galaxies?
Has she transformed her children into suns, stellar objects, planets?
Has bread-making become a cosmic cycle?
Is sourdough a primordial soup?
Is fermentation the expansion of the universe?
Has her fifteen-year-old son become the birth of a universe?
Of course, whether the artist succeeds or not, is irrelevant. What matters is whether or not the artist succeeds in giving meaning to her life, giving her family and all who see her art or are drawn into her orbit, an example of meaning-making in process, a view of one possible way to live, a glance of a particular type of happiness, in living it as well and largely as possible.
Bright Flashes and Unreachable Things
17 March - 30 April, 2011
Galeria Fucares Madrid announces its fifth show of Spanish/American artist Maggie Cardelus (Virginia, USA, 1962) in which she continues her exploration of the family photographic album. In this show the artist has expanded the photographic album to include the universe itself, as it unfolds in the domestic. A few women artists and writers have been working out how to be a mother and develop their art in a self-conscious way since the 1960’s. Maggie Cardelus is proposing a way to be in this world as both artist and mother, sacrificing neither.
In order for the mother/artist to survive, she must transform her world, however small, into the entire universe and more. She knows, of course, that this is an illusion, a strategy, a survival mechanism. She knows, of course, that all artists/all people at all times participate in their own seduction at the hands of their chosen passion, hobby, occupation, obsession, belief, whatever gives meaning and heft to their lives.
Has the artist succeeded in her alchemy?
Has she succeeded in transforming a fruit bowl into an ovary, a cluster of galaxies?
Has she transformed her children into suns, stellar objects, planets?
Has bread-making become a cosmic cycle?
Is sourdough a primordial soup?
Is fermentation the expansion of the universe?
Has her fifteen-year-old son become the birth of a universe?
Of course, whether the artist succeeds or not, is irrelevant. What matters is whether or not the artist succeeds in giving meaning to her life, giving her family and all who see her art or are drawn into her orbit, an example of meaning-making in process, a view of one possible way to live, a glance of a particular type of happiness, in living it as well and largely as possible.