The professor of History of Art and artist, María Gómez, opens at the Hotel Las Arenas an exhibition dedicated to the reflection around silk and women on 8 July at 20:30. It is a series of hardened and carved plaster sculptures carried out without moulds or models, of between 70 and 90 cm high. This exhibition aims to start a cultural and artistic act with the objective of promoting initiatives of “artistic creation” in relation with the Silk Road. As expressed by the artist: it is the “spear head” that will go on, from this path, towards other exhibition places.
29 june 2016
This exhibition, from the paradigm of feeling the plurality of women, tells, quoting Ana Mafé, the fate of women through a parallelism generated by the woman-silk duality: the chrysalis, its wrap and the process of obtaining the finest and most extraordinary fabric known as silk. Plaster gives voice to the sculptures transforming each one of them in a close and social being, with its wrap and growing process. In a way that its appearance reflects this precise moment in which it is. Silk and woman merge in a poetics where all of us can relate, in one or in several sculptures at the same time. Feeling beautiful and serene is an internal process in which we pull a internal thread that takes us to complete happiness of recognising us perfect before our eyes. Without ornaments, in essence. Offering light and transparencies, lightness and intensity, authenticity and harmony. Without reluctantly accepting what we see with the naked eye, we have to observe this plaster and silk women until being able of rediscovering their essence. “All of us come together as one under the same Sun, we all share the imperative need of finding us, affirming us and weaving our own I”. If possible, finishes Mafé, in silk, please.
María Gómez Rodrigo Graduated in Fine Arts by the Universitat Politècnica de Valencia in 1990 and doctor in Fine Arts by the Universitat de València, currently works as tenured professor of the Department of Art History of the Universitat de València. Among her research, restoration and historical and artistic heritage conservation works we emphasise the finding in 1991 in the Metropolitan Cathedral of Valencia, of an important number of paintings seriously burned since 1936 and that were constituted as disappeared. Likewise, she is in charge of the research and rehabilitation of important burned paintings of Valencian Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque painters, as well as the 19th century, published in the book: The burned paintings of the Cathedral of Valencia, Valencian Department of Culture, 2000.
She has also been in charge of the study and direction of the restoration of the twelve painted panels by Yáñez and Llanos de la Almedina, in the Main Altar of the Cathedral of Valencia, in the Technical Preservation Centre of the Valencian Community, whose result was published in the book Restauración de las puertas del retablo Mayor de la Catedral de Valencia, 1998. In those years, she is in charge of the technical direction and restoration of the twelve twills attributed to Paolo de San Leocadio of the Cathedral of Valencia, which represent the Mysteries of the Virgin Mary and the life of San Martín Obispo, at the request of the Valencian Department of Culture, Education and Science and the Council of the Metropolitan Cathedral of Valencian, and the rehabilitation and identification of the wall fresco painting seriously burned from 1936, attributed to José Vergara, in the niche’s dome of the Cristo de Santa María del Mar del Grao of Valencia, in 1996, through an agreement with the Valencian Council. That year she is appointed by the Council of the Metropolitan Cathedral of Valencia: Technician in Conservation and Restoration of the Movable Heritage of the Cathedral of Valencia.
In the last years her creative work has emerged with strength, which has left important samples both in painting and sculpture. The genre of the “portrait” has been always present in her work, but it particularly stands out her expressionist painting, specially the study of the “psique” human being, as a fundamental component for analysis and reflection.
Her technique is significant due to the quality it shows as a drawer, since her proficiency of drawing/anatomy provides to her characters the absolute evocation of any emotion. Also, she is specialist in wall painting of pretended architecture (trompe-l’oeil), carried out in church altars of the Valencian Community and outside. Recently, her mural work has been carried out for an important church in Philippines. These works allowed her for deepen in the Anamorphosis technique or studies of projective geometry that were published in: ANAMORFOSIS. El ángulo mágico; the first publication thereon in which she researched and carried out with the Renaissance techniques.
Among her last productions, she has moved from the two-dimensional ground to the three-dimensional, to the space that is conquered by her human sculptures, in which the expression of the moulded anatomic shapes not only emerge strongly from the hands of the artist but they show an interest for the human psique, for its concerns, for its being and its evolution. In this case, the importance is in women that, wrapped in chrysalis silk, revive as new nude creatures. The silk thread is the guiding thread of the artistic narrative of María Gómez, a reflection on women and their relationship with the silk dress, but also a look to the intimate self that submerges to revive.
SOME EXHIBITIONS OF MARÍA GÓMEZ
-PAINTING EXHIBITION: “APOLOGÍA”. Matisse. Valencia. 13-11-2002
-PAINTING AND DRAWING EXHIBITION: “ULLS DE FERRO”. March-April, 2006, Botanical Garden of Valencia. Universitat de València
-ANAMORFIC PAVIMENTAL PAINTING: DONA -2007. Big dimensions 8-3-2007, Valencia.
-ANAMORFIC PAINTING: “ANAMORSISMO” in the Siranga Contemporània Gallery, Valencia. 8-11-2007.
-MURAL PAINTINGS OF ARQUITECTURAL TROMPE-L’OEIL Main Altar of the Church La Milagrosa, Valencia, 2007. 85 square metres. 2007
-MURAL PAINTINGS OF ARQUITECTURAL TROMPE-L’OEIL San Vicente de la Roqueta, Valencia, 2011. 20 square metres, 2009
-PAINTING EXHIBITION:”ESGUARDS”. Castle of Alaquàs, Sala Vilarragut. Valencia, 2008
-EXHIBITION “REBILCAZ”: PAINTING-SCULPTURES. Site of the Government of Aragon, Teruel. 2-3-2012, City Hall of Teruel, Government of Aragon, Council and Amantes Foundation.
-MUESTRA INTERNACIONAL, MUVIM (VALENCIAN MUSEUM OF ILLUSTRATION AND MODERNITY). “UNIVERS POLIÈDRIC: Dones/mirades/propostes”, 8-3-2013. MARÍA GÓMEZ: “SOMOS VOSOTROS”
-PAINTING/SCULPTURE EXHIBITION: “VOSOTROS”. Mercantile Athenaeum of Zaragoza. September , 2014
-EXHIBITION: “SENTIMIENTOS”: CASTLE OF XÀTIVA, July-August, 2014. Sculpture and painting in the castle route (outside and inside areas) Catalogue: NITS AL CASTELL XVII Festival Internacional, July, 2014. Web: www.xativa.es
-PAINTING/SCULPTURE EXHIBITION AT THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS OF CASTELLÓN. Collective exhibition: “SIRIA VIVE” 31 October of 2015. MARÍA GÓMEZ.: Mural Painting and Sculpture. Title: “ERCASAM”.
-PAINTING EXHIBITION. COLLECTIVE ASSOCIATION: CULTURARTE Castle of Alaquàs 30 October - 28 November. Web cathalogue. 19102015culturarte-en-alacuàs.pdf
-MURAL PAINTING FOR A MAIN ALTAR ON CANVAS (3x4 metres). DESTINATION: CANONESSES REGULAR OF THE Lateran of St. Augustine. Monastery of St. Christopher Lapacan Sur 6333. Buena Vista, Bohol, PHILIPPINES. 2016.
Web: www.maria.gomez.es