A buffalo in a box of vortex.
I have never seen so many people looking at art. Really looking. Moving from piece to piece, examining every line in every corner of every work. Getting so close they can smell the paper, sniff the ink. Like zombies trying to figure out if what they see in front of them is human. Then, slightly confused, they shuffle on to the next. These are intricately detailed portraits, mostly of heads in space, but paired with an otherworldly drawing that questions the legitimacy of that portrait.
Moira Franco’s nameless exhibition at Galería Victor Saavedra opened very quietly. When I arrived there were just a few of her friends and one empty bottle of wine. As I opened another bottle the cork broke clean in two. This duality would resound for the rest of the evening. Franco’s current exploration is of left and right. Brain and hand. Pencil and page. Though it’s less a case of reality than a conscious decision. For while in the early stages of the development of this oeuvre she might have actually used her left hand, she is now happy to give the appearance of what might be left-handed, through using her right hand.
Let’s analyse a concrete example, “Iceberg” (2015), the largest drawing in the show. Covering a space of about two metres by three metres, there are two sheets of brown packing paper. On the left hand side is a huge, gorgeous, visceral head of a man. A man who doesn’t seem to realise he is up to his neck in water. He is staring into space. The water is rising, but so slowly he hasn’t noticed. He is awake but not conscious, not aware. You want to shout at him, scream at him, to wake up. But he is lost. In his mind’s eye, on the other page, there is a bison. A bison in a box of vortex. A frozen vortex. A transparent vortex. A still vortex. A vortex controlled, contained in an invisible box. A vortex stilled by the power of the man’s concentration. Don’t blink, or the power will escape. Will destroy the bison. The viewer decides for himself what he wants the bison to represent. In and of itself this is enough. Enough to make the point without labouring the point.
Yet this series of works is a relatively new departure for Franco, whose previous work was more straightforward as portrait. This current voyage is through some tempestuous seas, and she is finding it difficult to concentrate, to hold either hand steady, to eliminate the unnecessary. And so, in addition to that bison in the vortex box on the right hand sheet are some red arrows, odd scribbles of things, and a couple of lifeless human forms, almost , but not quite, the chalk line around a dead body. These have a quality about them that detracts from the overall work. I have no problem with them conceptually, only compositionally. They just don’t work. They are deeply symbolic, I am sure, but they don’t feel real, nor as if they belong. The man, deeply concentrating on this scene, in his mind, cannot be taking in all these elements. It is too confusing. And so there is an imbalance here.
And elsewhere. Every work, whether it be on paper, postcard or sketch book has a dichotomy. And often it works very well, producing a powerful interplay between the pages. Left and right, creative and analytical, real and unreal. And often, much like in a dream, it’s not clear which is which. There are repeated motifs, especially of forest animals — deer, wolves, owls. The vortex box appears in many guises, my personal favourite being where it exists only where other does not — rubbed out from the pencil marks on the background. The chalk outlines morph into alien life forms. There are odd motifs which are used only once — some Hebrew writing, a child’s puppet, a crown of thorns.
My favourite grouping is of a series of artist sketchbooks, opened to the middle and framed in glass, like a lepidopterist’s collection. As is the style of the moment, circles have been cut into them to reveal an image on a page at the back of the book. But take a closer look and things are not what they seem. The sketchbooks are not full of drawings, but have only the images you can see. The other pages are blank. Like a dream, there is only one thing to look at. This is not a deep, multifaceted life. And the pages are not beautifully cut. They have been hacked out, quickly, roughly, to reveal the image below. Still, even this is not real, as the images are as likely as not to be on yellow paper, or tracing paper, inserted into the book. In exactly the same way that, when we are dreaming, we bring in people, or places or things that cannot possibly be there.
The newest assembly of postcards are once again placed in pairs. Like tarot cards, these have some significance in the order in which they are laid out. Maybe another reading is possible. But unlike tarot, these images are not about divining the future. These works are the covers of a teenage girl’s school books, a girl who is trying to figure out her tortured identity. They are hypnotist induced regressions. Past lives. They are retellings of fairy tales. These are stills from dream sequences, and there are no zombie nightmares here. These are not the dreams of a fitful, but rather a deep and powerful, sleep.
