Carnations Spring from Lapels
Vivian Suter
September 09 – November 19, 2017
Curator: Mauricio Marcín
Vivian Suter’s paintings are created in Panajachel, a small village on the shores of lake Atitlán in Guatemala, where she arrived during her youthful wanderings in search of pyramids. Created in the humidity, heat and sonority of the jungle, her works stand in stark contrast with the museum spaces that welcome and embrace them. The result of their placement in these spaces, white and neutral or emotional, emphasizes architecture’s humanity— that is, the artifice of constructions.
The peculiarity and singularity of her work, created from the tropical unknown, contributes to its misguided exotization. Paradoxically, however, it’s quite true that in her paintings—as in the poem by Reyes—carnations spring from lapels, and a discarded broom raises roots through its shaft and flowers through its bristles. It seems that Suter’s paintings are infinite iterations of a same painting, a matrix of sorts meant to gravitate around variations on a single theme. Although each one offers a certain partial newness, what is surprising is their perseverance in producing combinations and deformations of previous experiences: invariability within variability. Vivian paints for her own ataraxy, and if there’s a desire that endures in her work, it’s that they serve to foster equal pleasure in those who look at them, somewhat similar to the serenity of flowers and the rabid fury that hurricanes revel in.
