Artist Statement

Facing the work of Paula Sarmiento is an exercise for introspection that is equivalent to observing one's own image reflected in a mirror. With an apparent simplicity, like that entailed in the daily act that reveals what we are, the neon words formulated in white light – I am the work of art –, more than reflection or confession, this opens up multiple questions that Correspond to the viewer accurately. The glow of the statement added to the blue aura that surrounds it, is product of the coldness of the tone, evokes the typical ads of the American advertising culture of the fifties and sixties of which pop art was used, not only to question the values of the consumer society, but also as a reaction against the canons of traditional art that framed the creative limits within endorsed media and techniques; not in vain, in some of this artist's installations, the main text is accompanied by words and phrases such as "yield," "do not enter" and "one way." These everyday references seek to regulate traffic on public roads, however, in this new context offered by the exhibition hall, these messages actually do the opposite, they enhance the ambiguity of the message to enrich the possibilities of its meaning.

In "La obra de arte soy yo," medium and content resulting in a notice that surprises by its strangeness, since it does not match what an unsuspecting viewer would expect to find in the urban landscape. Faced with the unusual use of neon and the durable, the daily expectation is frustrated and it is here that a fertile semantic field originates that makes room for symbolic, metaphorical and linguistic interpretations that ultimately seek to propose a different way of being in the world.

Outside the usual environment –the street–, the expressive faculties of neon added to the words resulting in statements built from light, whose symbolic load allows establishing a resignification of the mundane from the spiritual. Rooted in our collective unconscious, light is the concrete representation of an abstract reality, but not for this ambiguity does it make the message insignificant. On the contrary, even the evident meaning of light is obvious to most human beings of all times and places, light embodies ideas such as life, birth and liberation; by opposition to shadow or darkness, it becomes an image of knowledge, evolution and clarity. In this order of ideas, it is not gratuitous that the term is understood as an encounter with the truth, nor is it gratuitous to affirm that the deep meaning that constitutes this work of art intends to trigger a revelation of oneself in whoever reads it. This added to the search for the meaning of the contemporary individual, to whom the mass culture promoted by the advertising institution that has imposed a frenetic pace in which nothing is enough, and successes are ephemeral. The light is constituted as an alternative to the uncertainty and the void generated by this model.

Like so many works of contemporary art, Paula Sarmiento's requires a commitment from the viewer that is different from the usual. To achieve a production of meaning, observation must be replaced by participation. The expectant passivity of someone who has become accustomed to being surrounded by neon signs on the street is modified here, and the language of light that has become a dead metaphor there takes on a new dimension. In this particular case, the reading of the written text in the first- person singular invites its appropriation, and its meaning transfers the condition of an aesthetic object to whoever reads it. "I am the artwork" is a paradoxical slogan, because despite its apparent self-referentiality, it acts as a channel to allow the reader to understand himself and his life, as a work of art.

Regarding the written component of the art, it is worth highlighting the question about the messenger of the statement. Appealing to the literalness of the text, it will be necessary to conclude that the messenger is no other than the author, in this case the artist. However, in accordance with the principle of the autonomy of the text and the conception of the open work proposed by Umberto Eco, the statement also works independently, split from the author, and its interpretation in a biographical key extended towards a participatory one that does not only multiply its semantic possibilities but also, and more importantly, empowers the reader with a revelation that is clothed in truth: it is, we are, a work of art.

Also, in terms of the written form, the features of the calligraphy that compose it cannot go unnoticed, and whose sinuous figures have been adopted by the neon tubes. The cursive letter, also called handwriting for facilitating handwriting, is characterized by the fluidity of its stroke. Considering that the origin of plastic representation lies in this, and adding to this the continuity of the letters, the implicit language in this typography constitutes an additional piece in the matrix of meaning that equates the human condition to the artistic. And that, through the constant movement of the hand on the paper that the light enunciation insinuates, suggests a process. It is in life, then, where the work of art is forged.

In the current historical moment, the work of art cannot be judged based on its attributes of beauty, since the interests of contemporary art are established on axes that have opened the aesthetic experience, displacing from it a notion about which in this area there is less consensus. This being the case, the question about the importance of this revelation takes on special force, first because it reveals a lack in the understanding of each other, and second because it seeks to distance it from the focus of validation of the closed and demanding aesthetic parameters that, in open contradiction with those that govern the field of valuation of artistic practices, the advertising media have promoted. What does it mean then to equate the human condition to the work of art?

To recognize an object as a work of art is to grant it the quality of a reference capable of revealing the economic and social structures of a culture, and therefore the ideas and values that build it. In a society that worships the image and whose notion of success is linked to purchasing power at the service of appearance, understanding ourselves as art is a subversive idea, since it allows us to recover the value of our own existence from the everyday, from the outside. pressures that demand an outcome arbitrarily called success and turn it inward into a powerful counterweight. To dignify the day to day is to invert this notion to recognize the artistic character of the process that is life, and implies slowing down, existing in the moment, underlining the singularities, claiming the differences, and recovering the capacity for wonder. Treating the human condition in these terms is an invitation to live artistically. To affirm “I am the work of art” is, then, to invoke the words of Marc Chagall – “art is above all a state of the soul” – to apply them to our own humanity.