El Norte; “El caos y la belleza,” Guadalupe Loaeza; October 10, 2009
Chaos and Beauty
I am in Monterrey at the Centro de las Artes III in the building called “Creators.” In a few hours, at 8:30 pm, the exhibition “Carol Brown Goldberg: The New Millennium Abstraction,” will be inaugurated. Her works for this exhibit have been traveling, with much success, throughout Spain. The exhibit has taken place in Casa de Vacas of Madrid, in the Molinos Showroom of Murcia, and the Gabarrón Foundation Museum of Valladolid. Thanks to the Council for Culture and the Arts of Nuevo León, Mexico, and the American University Museum, thousands of people from Monterrey will be able to see it. I ask Carol to explain her paintings to me in as simple a manner as possible. She looks at me, smiles, and says:“Three years after 9/11, I started painting the works that comprise this exhibition. This is how I started working in 2004, and from then on I have created more than 100 paintings. I added the effect of pulverized glass into pigment in 2006. All of this came to my mind as a result of the 9/11 tragedy, which affected every American. The combination of chaos and beauty captured me. When the Twin Towers collapsed, thousands of pulverized glass particles were formed and they shone much more in light. This scene obsessed me for months, for years, until one summer, while I observed the sea, I suddenly had the sensation that for the first time I realized that the sun shone in the waves. I know that what I am saying sounds like a cliché, beginning with the fact that it is, in fact, a cliché, for those who are not able to see the stars shining in water, then why do most of us want to share this pleasure? Are we actually born with this gift? I then decided to find an element in my paintings that could touch people, and that is when I started to use pulverized glass in pigment so that, when it was dry, it would cause a splendor that illuminated the canvas’ surface. I ask myself why I never get tired of the stars, the reflection of water and of seeing the surface of my paintings. I believe that what truly connects us with one another is the first image of life that we have with human beings when we are born. It seems to be the conscience building of our mother’s expression. A baby does not focus on any other aspect of the face. It could be because after two weeks, once the membrane of the eyes disappears, the first image we capture is the fluid of the cornea. It is the first time we are aware that there is something visual. I think we all have in common our consciousness of light. It is proverbial! Nobody is conscience of their own childhood, however, we are all linked to objects or events that have to do with this symbolic language that we share from the day we are born”.
What Carol Brown Goldberg tells me while we visit the exhibit touches me. In her paintings she repeats her particles implicitly beyond infinity. When one looks closely at those circles, which we could imagine to be musical notes, it seems as if we are listening to those notes.
The exhibit will be in Monterrey until January 24, 2010. Do not miss it.
