Alejandrina J. Solares

Jarabacoa, Dominican Republic, 1973.

She was formed at the “Accademia of Belle Arti of Brera” in Milan. Since 1991 she has been developing her artistic research in Europe where she experienced a series of formative trips. During her prolonged stay in Italy she gets in touch with artists and lecturers and she establishes relationships which helped her formation.

In her work she analyzes a deep and unitary theme - the forms that life takes in spreading and organizing itself. The work of the artist investigates human problems and tribulations. The experienced reveals mystery and an extraordinary complexity, but also a threat. Life could end at any moment. Aspects such as human suffering, affliction, physical pain and the precariousness of life spring out in her works of art.

The plot of life is analyzed through three main subjects which can be traced along her artistic path: the phenomenon, the self-portrait and the portrait, the folk and fantasy tales (these writings and compositions are meant to create the “Artist Books” for which she nourishes a particular interest).

The artist creates polyhedric works using different materials and techniques in order to realize experimental works by mixing old and modern techniques which, sometimes, mingle themselves with multimedia supports.

She realizes: artist’s books, verbo-visual works, visual poetry; sculpture, painting, installations, site specific installations; video-installations, artist’s videos and sound art; performances, actions, engravings (intaglio printing), experimental graphic (hybridization), digital photography (paper/cloth printing). In the latest years she has been creating monochromatic works using the blue colour.

At the moment she lives and works in Quintano, CR, Italy. Her works have been exhibited in Italy and abroad.

The following web-sites are available to experience the work of the artist:

http://alejandrina-solares.oneminutesite.it/

http://solares-alejandrina.jimdo.com/

(Translation by Paola Marcarini)

Solares Alejandrina was born in the Dominican Republic in 1973 in a family of modest conditions. She lives in the Caribbean Island until 1991 then she moves to Europe where she begins a series of formative trips and continues her personal artistic research. Thanks to a scholarship she attends the “Accademia of Belle Arti of Brera” in Milan, Italy, getting in touch with numerous artists, critics and philosophers among which Francesca Alfano Miglietti, Remo Salvadori, Renata Boero, Vincenzo Ferrarri, Luca Beatrice, Maurizio Sciacaluga, Federico Ferrari etc. With them she experiences generosity, availability, and share. She establishes human relationships which helped to develop her formation.

Since 1991 she has been exhibiting in numerous personals and in collective reviews in private and public spaces. Her works have been exhibited in Italy and abroad. At the moment she lives and works in Quintano, CR, Italy.

In the work of the artist the attention to the aesthetic movements of the twentieth century conjugates itself to a consideration on the technique, the materials and the supports that define an original poetics and a personal style that goes beyond the traditional schemes and lead the artist to give life to works of art created by mixing old and modern techniques which, sometimes, mingle themselves with multimedia supports.

In her work she analyzes a deep and unitary theme - the form that life takes in spreading and organizing itself.

The artist investigates human problems and tribulations. The experienced reveals mystery and an extraordinary complexity, but also a threat. Life could end at any moment. Aspects such as human suffering, affliction, physical pain and the precariousness of life spring out in her works of art.

The plot of life is analyzed through three main subjects which can be traced along her artistic path: the phenomenon, the self-portrait and the portrait, the folk and fantasy tales (these writings and compositions are meant to create the “Artist Books” for which she nourishes a particular interest).

She works on these themes employing different techniques in order to express herself, such as sculpture, installations, site specific installations, video-installations, artist’s videos and sound art, performances, actions, engravings (intaglio printing), experimental graphic (hybridization), digital photography (paper/cloth printing), artist’s books, verbo-visual works, visual poetry and mainly monochromatic pictorial works (supports and various materials).

The artist defines her poetics with these words - “In my work I am urged to express elements that come from the deep of my heart, because I think that life is the most precious gift we have ever received. In life we may also come across pain and suffering – elements that we would like to erase.

My work focuses on these two aspects and clashes every time with the impossibility to give a meaning to this torment. For this reason I have directed my research and my effort towards aspects of everyday life that are often neglected or not perceived, toward symptoms, gestures and objects that are the residues and the rejects.

I consider my artistic approach as a process in which I tend to identify art with life itself. For this reason it entirely involves me including my body, both as obsession, both as experience to be lived. As a matter of fact, often, my works start from an autobiographical point of view. They are “self-portraits and portraits” of inferred or explicit emotional states and conscience which direct, reveal, provoke processes already latent in me in order to reveal them also to the user. Without any conflict, in the same measure, I explore the principles that rule the phenomenon because I am fascinated by the complexity, the inconsistency, the incomprehension of the reality around me. To do so, I freely recombine suggestions (languages) trying to give back a form and a sensibility (in such sense many of my works develop at a mental stage). In order to do so, without a logical order, I allow simultaneous interconnection of past/present, inside/out, form/content, nearby/distant to pass through as a rhizome.

I get involved in each project at various levels. Language is the result of a technical selection, though it is arranged by the work itself. I am constantly in search of synthesis and formal efficacy both through a visual poetics and a relational performance.

What I would like to do through my work is to bring to light hidden or non-perceivable human dimensions.

In my last works I have introduced breath, scratches, my hair, prints, caresses and kisses.”

The blue colour has been playing an important and constant role both in the work and in the life of the artist for more than ten years. As part of her personal poetical world it is a reason of constant investigation, in particular in her pictorial works.

The artist defines her choice of this colour with the following words - “My blue hair is the outer sign of my consecration to art. The colour is placed at the head level, the level of ideas. But it is also a way to communicate with other human-beings and to pervade the common place. When I paint objects in blue it is because I suppose they might recall that colour (rather than have it themselves). The blue colour has become pregnant and characterizes my work at the moment. I have entrusted to “Blue” the important task to reflect those states for which I feel I am not able to give a logical explanation of what I perceive or see, which I am only able to instinctively seize in a partial and mixed way and which other people and I have generically recognized, at least once in life, as Mistery.”

As for her pictorial works, she has developed a research process focused on the analysis, the splitting-up, the alteration and reinvention of phenomenal forms. The artist works without a sketch. She follows her vision of which is supported by intentionality, and she is able to seize the right moment to work. She let the colour be absorbed by the surface in a casual way and she later gives her own interpretation of it in order to give life to a peculiar world where the splash of colour is able to auto-determine itself and to determine.

She works with unstable materials. The pictorial materials can fade or dissolve when in contact with light, dampness, and the atmosphere, concurring to create the “climax” of the work of art as they are endowed with instability and precariousness.

The artist has deprived from her works of art frame and framework. She paints on canvas without any preparation.

The artist has focused her last personal exhibitions on this research process.

(Translation by Paola Marcarini)