A Return to Paradise
Guadalupe Plaza Petersen’s latest series of works act both as a meeting place, a point at which we might be able to rethink and overcome the separation which exists between us (inhabitants of planet Earth) and the environment; and as a journey of artistic reflection. The artist highlights the urgency of our current situation through a series of manipulated photographic works. Text from the artist follows.
A Return to Paradise
Where do we stand in this symbiotic world, bound by a common future?
I like to work first based on a concept or idea. Reflecting on connections that exist between certain life milestones; scrutinising, exploring changes, mutations, regenerations. The process is often spontaneous, the results unpredictable.
In the daily exercise that artists do, of recognising ourselves in images that arise many times (we do not always know where from) there is often the option of jumping. To give in to the void; to give everything to something with an unknown outcome.
In Return to Paradise I wanted to produce a series in which I was not at the centre, as with my other works. To shift the focus, to study something other than myself. It was a challenge, working with the landscape without falling into the commonplace, to move out to the edges, to maintain a certain distance and remain static behind the camera.
My intention was to re-create settings – environments – and explore the destruction of nature and the threatening space between the fantastic and the unreal.
I think it has more to do with exploration, and also with self-knowledge, running away from a place of comfort, creating artwork from an abyss, a place of emptiness. There is a fragility to the images, an intentional ambiguity, which speaks of helplessness, separation, limits, edges, time and how the state of things is on the verge of bursting.
What is it, and what isn’t it? Classical science insisted on equilibrium, order, and stability. Today we see fluctuations and instability everywhere. We have become aware of the inherent complexity of the universe.
Nature presents us with dialogues embedded one within another; cosmological history, histories on a molecular scale, history of life and of man until we reach our individual history.
Rarely, it seems, do we stop to ask what is on the other side? Will it be loss, pain, chaos and the need to escape?
We must review our positions, connect with this real world that sustains, that invites, enchants, demands. Time is so uncertain, insecure and abstract.
Life as a whole, as a single cosmic entity.
And it is upon this path that these images aspire to be, and where the forms begin to dissolve.
All images & text above © Guadalupe Plaza Petersen | Produced for A La Luz, 2022 | Please do not re-publish any of the above without prior written consent
