ProgresiveMagmatics
**PROGRESSIVE MAGMATICS – CLARA CARVAJAL**.
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The book must be written in strata, each new writing must have the form of a note, dated, so that the book presents itself almost like a diary (…) In the end, the book must present itself as a chronological stratification, a living formal process: where a new idea does not erase the preceding one, but corrects it, or even leaves it unaltered, preserving it formally as a document of the passage of thought. And because the book will be a mixture of things done and things to be done – of completed pages and pages in draft, or only intentional – its temporal topography will be complete: it will have at the same time the magmatic form and the progressive form of reality (which does not erase anything, which makes the past coexist with the present, etc.).
**Pier Paolo Pasolini**
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This text by Pasolini, taken from his “Divine Mimesis”, was brought up by Clara Carvajal in the context of our conversations about this project, which brings together several series that reiterate the geological and biological dimension of meanings and signifiers. Chains of meanings and signifiers that not only cross cultures back and forth, but mutate throughout their journey in space and time; and they do so because they are not only culture, but also nature. Chains that are not such because they are not linear, but rather stratigraphic. In them, as in Benjamin’s dialectical images, nature does not present itself as “present-and-alive” but “cites myth in the most recent history as that-past-immemorial: nature as prehistory”.
In their famous book *A Thousand Plateaus*, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari reflect on how the processes of stratification correspond to phenomena produced by “accumulations, coagulations, sedimentations and foldings” with the capacity to “imprison intensities”. This allowed them to refer to the transcodifications, intersections and encounters that occur during these processes of creation of new forms. In short, what happens between materials, bodies and times. Although the basis of their reflection pivots around the configuration of the layers of matter, they are aware that what really gives it meaning is the way it is articulated: what happens in its unions, in its way of coupling and unfolding, in short, in its relational condition.
The analysis of this magmatic space and form expands like wildfire to other areas of significance, which leads us to the consideration that articulates this project: the realization that these questions, referring to the articulation of matter, to the way of generating new folds and links, to the possibility of investigating new encounters between material objects and historical times, constitute a suggestive framework of reflection to approach Clara Carvajal’s practice. In this baroque game, everything has meaning; and everything, too, is susceptible of being emptied of meaning. Images, as Benjamin said, are spectra that only we can bring back to life, and these, assuming the emptiness that constitutes them, their “fossil nature”, open themselves to new meanings, repolarize and gather in new/old constellations.
These are the fields of forces with which Clara Carvajal works, with the stroke of a gouge or cryptogram, opening and superimposing different writings and images until the writings become images and the images become writing or until, as if emulating the movement of a thaumatrope, the past is trapped in the present like a bird in its cage, or vice versa.
**ALEXIS CALLADO – INDEPENDENT CURATOR**.
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He holds a degree in Art History from the University of Havana. He is currently curating the Santiago Sierra exhibition to be held at CA2M this year. He is an active dynamizing agent in the promotion of exchanges between the artistic scenes of Spain and Ibero-America. He worked in the selection, coordination and production of editorial projects of graphic works, photographs and sculptural objects for the company Arte y Naturaleza in Madrid. He has curated and organized art projects in Sweden, Spain, France, Guatemala, Mexico, Argentina, Chile and Cuba. He collaborates with publications, museums, associations and centers specialized in contemporary art. He is a member of the Transatlantic Network and co-founder of The Curatorial Bureau.
CLAUDIA RODRIGUEZ-PONGA – TEACHER AND CURATOR**
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She is an associate professor at IE University, Universidad Nebrija and SUR Escuela (UC3M), and a visiting professor at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM). She is curating a solo project by artist Eva Lootz that will open on May 8, 2024 at Sala Alcalá 31 and has just inaugurated, together with Sofía Saenz de Santa María, a space without a fixed venue called ZONA. His curatorial practice includes other solo exhibitions with Valeria Maculan (OTR Espacio de Arte), Sara Ramo (Sala Alcalá 31) and Debora Bolsoni (Athena Contemporanea, Drawing Lab Paris), as well as group exhibitions and collaborative projects such as “Nudo-Nido”, curated with Isabella Lenzi and winner of “Se busca comisario” (Sala de Arte Joven de la Comunidad de Madrid). Her latest publications include essays such as “Algo piensa”, in Revista Concreta, “Cuentos caníbales”, edited by the Instituto de Estudios Postnaturales, “El tarot de Eva”, in Revista Accesos (UCM), “Sobre el arte como trabajo afectivo-reproductivo”, in Revista Arte ConTexto, “¿Creen ustedes en lo que existe?”, in Revista Re-visiones (UCM), or “Crítica en estado de rêverie”, in Revista de Occidente.