ART, A DESPERATE CRAFT
By Ángeles Ascúa
Rosario is three-hundred kilometres from Buenos Aires. It is an area marked by profuse intellect and aesthetic dissidence, with a radical gaze moving in a geographic setting that stretches along the banks of the Paraná River and is intertwined in the legends and ecstatic euphoria of the littoral region. This is the landscape of Argentina’s third largest city, home to the artist Claudia del Río. The river embraces the city from end to end; it is understandable that, with its dazzling presence, Del Río transformed it into an instrument for a series of isochromatic paintings entitled “Litoral y Coca Cola‘‘ [‘Littoral and Coca Cola’] (2009). One inherent quality of her work is the particular way in which she treats the materials, in such a way that her method suggests alchemy, somewhat like the mystery the secret formula of the drink mentioned represents for mankind. For these works, Del Río prepared an unctuous and grainy paint whose colours range from reds to browns and which adamantly evoke the muddy waters of the Paraná. Some of the motifs depicted include geometric buoys floating adrift, two wild animals, and a cabin against the horizon, all of which could have been sketched with a stick on one of the riverbanks, in a loving osmosis. Related to this work is the set of portraits the artist titled “El extraordinario caso de los pájaros que dibujan” [‘The Extraordinary Case of the Drawing Birds’], created between 2006 and 2018.1 These drawings were made in pencil using a tiny motif of figure eights repeated infinitely to form a uniform, fabric-like texture on which she then places the eyes, a nose, a mouth, a flower, and other particular traits. Del Río says that these drawings appeared to her with the morning song of a thrush 1
The series originated during her residency in Mojácar, Spain. The area is known for its olive groves.
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