Watercolor and ink on paper
42.3 x 29 cm

Chus Martínez wrote about this work when it was first exhibited at Travesía Cuatro Gallery in Madrid¹: On this occasion, the nature of Teresa Solar’s work is somewhat different from usual. She momentarily takes a step back from installation to instead concentrate on the relationship between sculpture and drawing. The pieces that comprise the exhibition are an attempt to reflect on the genesis of her work. The drawings and ceramic pieces thus act as a type of graphic record outlining the structure of reflection, perception and experience that is at the root of each form, each piece and the relationships that the forms—be them drawn, expressed through clay, or forged from metal—establish with one another. The work of Teresa Solar is loquacious—it never falls silent—and constantly evolves in dialogue with the artist’s hands. Hands that occasionally draw, scratch and color. Hands that touch and feel the earth with water and know what the form needs from the elements. And hands that forge, creating organs of metal. What all these forms allow us to see is what could be called ascending curiosity, which is present in the work of Teresa Solar. A type of curiosity that is perpetually complemented by a concern for method—accomplishing each one of the pieces in the best possible way—and for the way they are understood as a whole: the groups that are formed as each piece comes into existence, so to speak. Notice the cavern-like shells, which have a mantle just like the cavities of marine molluscs: a clay shell and a casing that provides the creature with shelter and gives it color and a sense of life in drawings. These figures open themselves up to us and seem as if to say: ‘Let me ask you a question!’, and, ‘Allow me to make a confession!’. Who has inhabited these forms? The confession being that whoever it was has managed to deposit the material and rotate from within in such a way that they have created a perfect mantle. They have managed to carve out an interior, a cave, a protection system and, at the same time, they have left a record of the effort that went into the shell’s development thanks to the adornments and words. Words that have also been written with the bones of a flexible skeletal structure that is able to produce ink with a secreted but not yet calcified substance.


^{1 https://teresolar.com/Forms-of-fleeing-2020}