Skiascope Gallery, a newcomer on Kooness marketplace, presents the artists Alexis Yebra and Eugenia Soma
“[Artistic understanding] means that the mind rests on its object, contemplating it simply and fully, without abandoning it for any other interest." (Benjamin I. Gilman - GILMAN, Benjamin Ives. "On the Distinctive Purpose of Museums of Art," in Communications to the Trustees Regarding the New Building (Boston: Privately printed by the Committee on the Museum, 1904), 46.)
Taking from words of Benjamin Ives Gilman (1852-1933), one of the main protagonists of the early XX century debate on the appropriate way to exhibit works of art in museums, Madrid based Gallery Skiascope employs a curatorial approach in managing a focused selection of artists. Curator María Lightowler’s interest falls on artists who are outside of the historical circulation and contemporary living artists who use documentation and the collection as a tool for thought and discussion. Skiascope uses a curatorial approach investigating contemporary language through a variety of cultural supports, among which painting, photography, video and installation.
Among the artists represented by Skiascope Gallery, we find Alexis Yebra and Eugenia Soma. Alexis Yebra is a Franco-Argentine artist born in the city Buenos Aires in 1967. With a degree in sociology from the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo and a Master’s degree in political science and sociology from FLACSO Argentina, he studied art at the School of Fine Arts in Mendoza. María Lightowler describes him as “an astute artist who, with a subtle gaze, manages to highlight the framework of art itself and the mechanisms that transform it into an instance of communication, as complex as it is necessary.” He is Interested in the dialogue between painting and memory. Yebra, through his paintings, reveals both the liberating feeling of amnesia and the possibility of forgetting what has been learned. His works are characterized by crossed-out, blackened sections traversed by strokes and seams, “to create without the burden of conventions” says María Lightowler. Questioning the role of painting in the present, the artist adds quotations and words in his works, ultimately turning to an ironic interaction with objects as well. For example, in one of his works, Yebra gives to an old open dictionary an ear, only to close it off in a glass case, with no possibility of hearing.
Eugenia Soma, born in Buenos Aires in 1981, studied art in a variety of different institutions: the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes Prilidiano Pueyrredón, the workshop of Héctor Destéfanis, and the Universidad de Buenos Aires, completing the Applied Art Diploma at the Uberbau House Society, São Paulo, Brazil. She participated in 2021 in the seminar cycle of Proyecto PAC at the Gachi Prieto Gallery in Buenos Aires. In 2022 she participated in the R.A.R.O. residency in Madrid, Spain and in 2023 she was selected to participate in the Pilotenkueche residency in Leipzig. Germany. In May 2023 she made [Unidad de tiempo] en el espacio, open studio with the curatorship of Federico de la Puente. Soma's focus in her installations is the conquest of space with drawings and “La Conquista del Espacio” (2023) brings this view to life. The two dimensional elements in the artwork affects the space in which it is installed and is ultimately incorporated in the three dimensional reality. Conquering this space outside of the paper, the artwork also affects the artist, bringing her to investigate new ways of living with drawing. Conquering space, says Eugenia Soma, is “to observe the atmosphere that affects every surface with a light that is colored with the color of every city at every time”.
If the dialogue for Alexis Yebra was between memory and amnesia, for Eugenia Soma a double dialogue take place in her works: the one of space with emptiness and the one of light with space.