INCISIONES, Solo Show / Galería NAC / Santiago, Chile / 2018

A needle enters and exits a cotton-based paper; the paper is white, and the figures emerging are colorful and intermittent. In “Incisions”, there is a sense of expansion, spaciousness, and incompletion, inviting us—through María Valenzuela’s gaze—to complete these unprecedented geometric forms with our own eyes. The interruption of the threaded line on the paper reveals both the materiality and the physical choreography involved in piercing the paper through embroidery—a repetitive, almost mechanical act—yet one that breaks the rigidity of geometric patterns.

There are unfinished shapes and circles, like portals with fissures that invite us to enter, inhabit, and witness the birth of a perceptual event. The path we trace as we connect the circles and geometries on the white paper leads us to a territory where countless moons overlap like eclipses. The role of white is to articulate these forms, and the thread—disappearing from the paper only to reappear—makes visible the materials and how they coexist, though contrasting, in a certain harmony.

Samuel Beckett noted that it is better—or at least not worse—to erase texts than to darken the margins, to fill the holes in words so that the white may appear. Artist María Valenzuela has taken this reflection into her work, showing that her broad experimentation with formats and materials has led her to create an open piece—one that invites a curious and active viewer to engage with it.

Natalia Matzner.