Robert Silberman

Gloria Carrasco trained as an architect, and her work often reveals the love of order that characterizes so many practitioners of that profession. For all the control and geometric precision in her art, however, there is also another strain, sometimes lyrical and sometimes grandly expressive. Carrasco always combines conceptual clarity with formal rigor, establishing what she has described as a “dynamic where the existential and the symbolic live together.”

The works in Out of the Labyrinth focus on nature in a fundamental sense: the physical world, not living beings, natural forces rather than organic processes. They use artistic order to address natural disorder, but with an awareness of the beauty to be found in the world.Frontier of the Sky highlights a basic feature of many areas in Mexico, including Mexico City: the mountain ranges that define the boundaries of vision by their presence on the horizon. Here the solid blocks open up to the sky above the mountaintops, setting mass against void, opacity against clarity. Geometries of the Earth uses ceramic elements to portray the forces generated by tectonic plates along seacoasts, with the fractures and raw edges indicating the boundaries of the plates and the concentric patterns miming the effect that can arise when magma is cooled by ocean water. Finally, Dynamic Forces — Pure Intensities presents a record of volcanic activity before an eruption, offering a visible, scientific rendering of an invisible, subterranean phenomenon. There are active volcanoes in Mexico, so the possibility of a catastrophic eruption remains (like the danger posed by earthquakes, which have proven devastating, as in the Mexico City quake of 1985, which left more than 5,000 dead). Carrasco laboriously drew the charts by hand using a projected image. The ceramic panels present fundamental geological facts in dramatic fashion while touching upon complex social-psychological concerns. Introducing imagery more common in a scientific laboratory than in an art gallery is a daring move, and a satisfying one, and provides one more reminder of the adventurous spirit that drives Carrasco’s art.