If you still want to see something
In July, two exhibitions of the artist Eva Lootz (1940) coincided in Madrid (Spain). One of them is a retrospective of five decades of her work. This exhibition will remain open until September 2. These five decades of creation are presented with a title more than suggestive:
Making as who says: and what is this?
Elsewhere, in the Sala Alcalá 31, his most recent works were on display. The exhibition was divided into two spaces located on two floors, one above the other. On the first floor we could see an installation. On the upper floor, on its walls, there was a series of about a thousand drawings.
Of the two exhibitions I decided to discover the second one, with his most recent creations. Although I am very skeptical about contemporary art, I cannot deny that I like the work of this artist, and moreover, I was seduced by the invitation to see something: "If you still want to see something... hurry up: everything is disappearing" (Eva Loootz. 2024).
the artist Eva Lootz, who delves into her reflections on resonance, light and the limits of our perception... (Claudia Rodríguez-Ponga Linares. Curator of the exhibition).
Today I will present the heart and guts of this exhibition (this is a very personal opinion): the installation located on the first floor of the exhibition hall.
IN SEARCH OF DIAMONDS
On July 20, 2024, at 17:39, I found myself, after passing a thick black curtain, in a dark room.
A female voice is heard...
... In the half-light, at the very border between the restless noises of the big city and the silence of a gloomy room, the air is permeated by a woman's voice. The modern echo of a millenary wisdom: undoubtedly a reincarnation of the Bird Goddess. A parsimonious voice, a fine thread, unveils from the dawn the path that flows to the diamonds:
Now that you are young... now that the star approaches the edge of the window... now that I see how it advances... now that I have put down the book... now that I have put the tea water to boil... now that I speak to tell you: don't run, nothing is so urgent. Look around you and think; find out where you are, clarify what you have come here to do. Do you know what you want? They don't know where to find the diamonds... listen to the silence... and listen... (Eva Lootz)
I accepted the challenge... to feel... not to think. Or, to be precise, to think with the body. The body thinks, and when we listen to it, ideas and images arise in our mind: I am afraid, I am cold, I am in love ...., the emotion, the thinking body, becomes feeling, what we feel. I set out to pay attention to silence, the sound of the invisible.
Little by little..., the darkness was transformed into contours and shapes shining in the darkness. The unconscious, the unseen, becomes visible, conscious. A new world appears. Without an instruction manual, apart from the guided tours, I see myself immersed in a spatial landscape, or perhaps sacral or perhaps a womb.
The ultraviolet light has revealed the invisible, textures and colors previously not visible. Different materials such as sand, salt, earth, eggshells, minerals,..., under the ultraviolet spell are transformed into a neon light show. Together, they form a luminous landscape that stands out against the nocturnal atmosphere of the room.
The light and the arrangement of the visible objects impact my perception. A few modest eggshells are transformed into a moon shining in a cosmic landscape.
I move among the luminous forms, I bend down, I lie down, I listen to the silence, I feel a small luminescent dune, its texture resembles salt, a shining salt.
The experience shapes my consciousness. On the hunt for mindfulness, for mind-body unity, I stay for about three quarters of an hour.
I am still looking for the diamonds...
CARTESIAN DUALISM
I am not going to discuss here, whether what I believe to be the external world is only a construct of my mind: Cogito ergo sum (Descartes). But I am interested in addressing Cartesian dualism, the division between mind and matter.
Eva Lootz tries, through her work, to break this duality. In this, and in other installations by this artist, there is an effort to unite the world of the lived, the world of the felt with perception.
Perhaps no one denies that what is felt influences what is perceived and that perception influences what is lived, what is felt.
However, the Cartesian duality is present, as hegemonic thought, in any of the so-called modern societies regardless of their façade.
On this point, Lootz's work is radical in its determination to make visible the dramatic consequences of this rupture between mind and matter. The separation between the work of managers and bureaucrats (mind) and Nature (matter). A separation that has turned Nature into something to be dominated, a thing to be subdued with the tragic consequences we are experiencing.
We are, in general, as distant from matter as children who believe that milk comes out of the refrigerator. Indifferent to the living conditions of those who work in the extraction of raw materials or in agro-industry. People who for the bureaucracy, as Eva Lootz says, are only bodies (matter).
