Artist: Diana de Solares

Diana de Solares: The Material Space of Radiance
March 17, 2016 – April 23, 2016
Henrique Faria Fine Art
New York, NY, USA

It is no coincidence that my immersion in art began through my brief studies of architecture as a very young woman. In retrospect, it makes sense to me. I now realize that I wasn’t seeking tools for creating buildings and houses, but trying to get at some kind of knowledge about space in human life. Some years ago, my paintings became three-dimensional, and then my three- dimensional constructions became installational.

The notion of space led me to that of place. And to questions such as, Where are we when we are in the world? How does an object become a place? How do we experience the world?

Andrew J. Mitchell begins his brilliant monograph of Heidegger’s ideas on sculpture proposing, “sculpture teaches us what it means to be in the world…to be in this world is to be ever entering a material space of radiance1”. Mitchell is referring to Heidegger’s reflections on the relation between space and body. In this context, space is no longer deemed as the void where bodies are contained, but as an almost material entity that facilitates and embraces, that allows bodies to appear, radiate, and thus, constitute a world. In Heidegger’s novel conception of limit, a body’s boundary does not mark its end but rather its beginning–for it is there that it interacts and mingles with the physicality of the world around it. This beautiful notion of a participatory space that allows bodies to move beyond themselves and distribute their radiance has changed my perception of a work of sculpture, as it appears in front of me.

I imagine an experience in which a multiple exchange of radiance occurs. The work of art emanating its life through space, and the viewer momentarily emptying himself to accommodate its radiance, in an ongoing movement that transforms both person and object. With the works contained in The Material Space of Radiance, I have sought the embodiment of space through the various visual and haptic qualities of the constructions interacting in it. These varied works have unfolded in the same span of time and share qualities of color and tactility as well as an affinity to human body, and in sharing this moment in space and time they “slowly dissolve in the world”.

– Diana de Solares

• Happenings