THE LIGHT OF SPIRIT: OLGA DE AMARAL
The Patinoire Royale–Galerie Valérie Bach becomes, for one exhibition, the temple of the Amerindian spirit and its powerful spiritual charge, in direct link with the cosmos, through the timeless work of the Colombian artist Olga de Amaral. This unclassifiable artist and her production, whose eternal force is haloed with gold -a glorious and divine stainless material- characterizes her mode of expression. A selection of some forty exceptional works, which cover the last 15 years, are presented here for the first retrospective in Belgium.
Her luminous work re-explores the textile tradition of South America by directly quoting the colors, shapes, graphics and materials of the pre-Columbian world, using gold or silver leaf, as well as the natural pigments of the world: indigo, amaranth, turquoise, and earth-colors, in a vast firework display against a backdrop of Andean music.
Her great sensitivity, in the service of a meticulous textile practice and an innate taste for interlacing, mosaics and mats, makes Olga de Amaral a passer-by between the ancestral spirituality of the Incas and our contemporary society. Delivering much like many artifacts, a poignant testimony of this immense civilization which disappeared in the first half of the 16th century.
The work of Olga de Amaral, characterized by a high degree of homogeneity and a fidelity to herself, for more than sixty years, would be without a doubt betrayed if one saw there only a simple visual manifestation, flattering our eyes , without any finality other than being very decorative, conferred to him by its colors and metallic sparkles. The work of weaving, cutting and combing textile fibers, sometimes freed from linen straps or organized by falling wire curtains, sometimes immersed in gesso, or by the practice of gluing Japanese paper stiffened by rope, are as much surprising techniques directly inspired by the ethnographic know-how of Amerindian civilizations, and thus constitute the structuring axis of a timeless production, of which we do not always know whether it is contemporary works or archaeological remains.
A great power characterizes these colors and these metal tones, ranging from bronze to silver, from gold to mother- of-pearl, focusing our imagination around a form made of a rain of colors and reflections, borrowing this force from that of Russian icons or Buddhist Stupa. There is therefore a very spiritual, almost sacred perspective, invested by the artist in these murals, condensing in the subtlety of the result a creative process similar to prayer or meditation. Each of Olga de Amaral’s works appears, in its uniqueness and originality, as the narrative of an inner journey, recounting the joys and sorrows, the difficulties and the dazzling, the worries and the certainties of this artist who, as a result of her fame and international renown, continues to practice her art as a tireless and humble seeker.
To contemplate a work of Olga de Amaral is to be dazzled by the light of a spirit.
