It’s not dark yet, but it's getting there, the homonym title of a song by Bob Dylan, is a series composed of three images, two of which are part of the MACAM collection. Made in 2003, the prolific year in which Adriana Molder also concludes the series Carlota, Copycat and Alien Burglar, these works take us to the beginning of the research that Adriana Molder has been developing in the field of figuration, where the face occupies the central place.

Evoking cinematic images, a source to which she regularly resorts to as a starting point, these representations of other representations become autonomous in the unusual process of reproduction that characterizes the artist's work, which is freely carried out without study or projection on the medium.

Keeping references to the cinematic shots - subtly high-angle front shot and side low angle shot - and privileging the close-up of the face as the focal point - Adriana Molder establishes a relationship with silent movies through the black and white composition. This relationship is enhanced by the look of the female characters, recalling the accentuated expressiveness of the silent movies Divas, and as a descriptive element, takes on a narrative component that the viewer finds suspended. Reinforcing a dimension of memory and past, the use of black and white, between darkness and light, operates in tonal variations that are enhanced by the indian ink drawing technique. The wavy and translucent support, obtained from four grouped sketch sheets, gives a monumental scale to the work. The use of diluted or opaque stains contradicts the linearity of the drawing and assures expressiveness, destabilizing conventional notions of drawing and painting in the apparent subversion of the technique and the support.

Aqueous, blurry and dark images articulate echoes of terror and romanticism, attesting also to the artist's admiration for the paintings of Edvard Munch, Egon Schiele, Odilon Redon and the German expressionist cinema.

Wynnie Minerva

Artworks

The Nightmare II [O Pesadelo II]2023

Eugenio Merino

Adriana Molder