Five thousand words would not be enough. The works’ structures and themes span across the numbers, repetitions, scores, the infinitely large and the infinitely small, gestures, transformations, libraries, sharing, generosity, colors, construction and, deconstruction, performances, guided by a desire to bring together multiples to become one, and ones into the many.
I vividly remember one of her first gestures in art school: she asked other students to draw with charcoal on kraft paper for ten minutes. Next each drawing was burned together in the same container. To each participant collected a small portion of the remaining ashes and stored them in small glass jars.
This gesture, both in its symbolic and material forms, revelas Natalia’s questioning of the transformation of effort. It explored how, through a single ritual, individual expression could merge into a collective work and become a “ we ,” a whole.
With this first act, Natalia sketched the foundations of her visual language.
Generosity is never one-sided: it lies both within the act of giving, and through the capacity to receive. It is a relationship, a two-way exchange, a silent duel. It is in this tension, this reciprocity, that her piece Dual was born. It was in her Peoria (Illinois) apartment that Natalia began to ask herself this question: “ How can we talk about the continuity of an Artwork ? ”
After her piece Devota, she focused on a seemingly fragile material: tissue paper. She explored its myriad forms, its possible metamorphoses. She discovered that, when the pages are crumpled and creased, the fibers break, and this delicate paper can paradoxically become more resistant. It can be patched, reinforced, assembled by sewing. The gesture transforms the material, and the material becomes an extension of the gesture.
When she creates, Natalia maintains an intimate and absorbed, almost “ hermetic,” relationship with her work. Time, repetition, and the labor of her gestures are an integral part of her approach. She is immersed within the materials, the space, and the realm of sensations. For Natalia, the materials speak for themselves. “All my pieces speak of the beginning,” she says — of the beginning, of the origin. Each stage of the material’s transformation becomes a work in its own right. Each fragment bears traces of the past, intimate memory, and the potential for metamorphosis.
The works gathered in this exhibition are part of this continuity. Each color is a spatio-temporal unit, a measure of gesture and duration. Over time, these colors fade, revealing the pure memory of movement, like an archaeology of work: the scars of matter.
Palette of Dual and Palette of Dual 8 play a central role in the exhibition. These works condensed matter, gesture, color, and memory into a compact, almost intimate format, extending the gestures of the larger installations. Each is accompanied by a photograph of the original fabric, revealing the initial layers of color.
Each Palette of Dual is composed of bricks extracted from the transformed fabrics, reassembled by shades of color, and activated by the water of a site. The water becomes fluid memory, linking past gestures to the present, marking a temporal and geographical anchor. These palettes are sensitive cartographies of time and space. They bear witness to an effort, a collective memory, a physical engagement with matter.
In Poématiques XL, Natalia composes scores — not musical in the traditional sense, but like recipes, sensitive cartographies, transformations of matter.
These scores will one day become a polyphone for a giant imaginary music box. She uses paint to trace symbols, but her approach remains far removed from the traditional codes of painting.
She even removes color from her gesture, “scalping” it, leaving only traces, ghost lines, the scars of a movement.
Each score is then designed to become a sound piece, where each symbol corresponds to a sound. Like a form of sensitive mathematics.
With Nova Dual Lima.1, the performance unfolds on a Lima beach: the gesture takes shape, becomes part of the space, and transforms the landscape. The material is moved, shared, and activated by a collective ritual. A photograph accompanies the work, capturing the moment of the gesture and its resonance.
Dual ICE Storm.2 condenses this dynamic into a sculptural piece composed of 26 glass jars containing melted snow. Each jar is the residue of a colored snowball collected during a recent performance. These liquid fragments become witnesses to an ephemeral and poetic activation of gesture in a winter environment.
Natalia transforms materials as much as human relationships — she weaves sensitive, lasting connections through art. Natalia leaves a lasting mark on people.
Her work is a constant weaving of the intimate and the universal, the invisible and the embodied.
Natalia Villanueva Linares’s work questions memory, transformation, and the relationship between the origin and the infinite. Pieces like Sisters 1-10, where spools of metal thread symbolize gestures bound by memory, and the film Breathing, which documents the creation of Sister No.0, testify to the importance of repetition and gesture. Through works like Dual ICE Storm.2, she transforms matter and time, inviting us to rethink what we preserve, what we share, and what we let disappear.
Through this exhibition, Natalia invites us to explore her multiple landscapes: fragments of gestures, time, and memory in constant transformation.
I’ve known Natalia for 22 years. We first met when I was 16. We were in pre-art school before we started at the Beaux-Arts de Paris. I’ve had the chance to be a participant and active witness to her life and practice. As a performer and gesture maker, I’ve been a confidant of her work since our first encounter, which occurred over a cigarette in the courtyard of the pre-art school at the Glacière Ateliers. And I don’t think I’ve ever missed a single one of her pieces.
Today, she asked me to write the text for her exhibition: “ The multiplying landscapes of Dual ” And it was with great emotion that I accepted, without hesitation.
So, I try, as best I can, to convey a fragment of her colors through my words.
Artist / Curator / Friend
Translation in English by Earl Power Murphy
73-75 rue Quincampoix 75003 Paris France
Tuesday – Saturday 2 pm – 7 pm and with rendez vous
tel : +33 (0)1 42 77 05 97
www.galeriedohyanglee.com
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