BEHIND THE SEEN
When I visit Leonor Ruiz Dubrovin’s workspace a few weeks before her exhibition one thing comes clear right away: there are lots of veils. Many of the paintings and the sculptures represent objects covered with cloth.
It is hard to decipher, what lies underneath the cover. What is visible seems to hint to the world of classical art: there are skulls, busts, horses, religious figures, legs, arms and torsos. It is a world of baroque symbols, with very little obvious connection to the contemporary reality. However: almost everything is broken, scattered, dismembered. The scene looks like a studio or museum after a considerate session of vandalism.
The most intriguing question is, have these objects been destroyed, or are they being born? Are they in a process of degeneration, or are they in the middle of regeneration? This paradox seems to be typical for Dubrovin. The images of destruction and creation are always closely linked in her works and often impossible to tell from another.
The chaos is controlled, even pretty at places. The symbols in the paintings – less violent than in the sculptures – are mute. Instead of being vestiges of some former cultural paradigm, they seem to hint at something very personal, which resists easy interpretations. When I talk with Leonor, I get the picture that on one level she is dealing with the problematic relationship between the art and commerce, the expression and the product. This is what lies behind the scene.
Just as these works lie somewhere halfway between birth and destruction, so does the artist also stand half-uncovered between her works and the reception.
