Margarita’s Wood
Olive wood has a tender perfume. Its scent is so delicate that one can be next to a finished work piece, and remain unaware of the particular atmosphere that it is so created. As if the log’s soul travels away from its own timber.
Sculptor Margarita Checa works mostly with polished olive wood however she sometimes uses cedar or mahogany. A few days ago, she put on an exhibition at the Lucia de la Puente Gallery. In the folding screen, “The Three Graces”, a folding screen, is where the inlaid work made of bullhorn fragments reflects the broken line of the wood. Not its scent.
This folding screen encapsulates three tall and delicate women in haute-couture parody-like costumes, who are presented in the different sides of the folding screen – front and back – with a fashion model aura, and as if their bodies were going with the flow of the rhythms of an almost classical dance. The language of the “Three Graces” has a clear almost festive intention, if not ironic. This is the most refreshing sculpture of the “Singing to Life” exhibition of Margarita Checa’s works. The other of the sculptures make reference to the several aspects of the female code: sensuality (“Salome”), intellect (“The Mind”), motherhood (“The Warrior”, and the so mysterious and incomprehensible intimacy that women hold in some important periods of their vital cycle (“The Hidden Place”).
but also to the symbolic
The symbology encompassed in Margarita Checa’s sculptures has been associated with elaborated forms of primitive cultures. The elongated head shapes, the big and rough feet, and the big hands, presupposes women from African ethnic groups, from ancient tribes. The artist says she nourishes herself from collective unconsciousness that, even if it’s clearly related to the woman of the ancient times, but also to the symbolic elements of Pre-Hispanic cultures, like the hummingbird and the snake.
Beyond the graceful lines, and the discreet display of her extraordinary technique – strongly influenced by the visions and lines of the unforgettable Cristina Galvez , Margarita Checa’s sculptures speak (and not so quietly) from the very soul of her characters, frozen as long as needed in the sensuality of the wood. They actually talk.
Picture: “The Three Graces” Picture: “The Three Graces”
Back
