Verónica Aguilera
Publicity is loneliness outside (Max Frisch)
An open, rectangular space borders on a rectangular building, an irregularly-shaped space is enclosed by a few buildings, an elongated building harbors an elongated pool. These are very simple places. Nothing seems complicated. Nothing worthy of special mention, at first. For as soon as people come onto the scene (and generally there are a lot of them) these simple places become interesting, striking, because they assume a profile of their own through the character and will of their users.
All the places Verónica Aguilera observes, changes and works on as an artist are public spaces: school buildings, swimming pools, parking lots. All of them have moments when they are not used over the course of the day, year, or decade. At these times, these places are liberated from their respective populations, which have already stamped their own rhythm on them, as well as their control, which in turn, as the irony of fate would have it, comes back to the users as a regulating structure and abstract control mechanism.
Yet when the places are empty, they lie fallow like resting fields, drawing breath and collecting their thoughts. Then they change, become neutral or innocent and some even superfluous. Whereas others may turn their backs on these places during the aforementioned closing times, these are the moments the artist feels call for her intervention. Her projects come to life precisely when the public has turned its gaze away: schoolyards in the holidays, parking lots that are empty at night and a swimming pool shortly before demolition. Yet Verónica Aguilera neither wants to cure these places of an inappropriate use, nor does she seek to expose the perhaps hidden myth of these places. Her art is neither therapeutic nor spiritual. Verónica Aguilera’s projects are completely free of aggression and nonetheless, or precisely for that reason, political in a compelling way. They make it clear how subtly power is exercised, via spatial arrangements, temporal rhythms or silence. It is precisely this silence that the artist counters with a speech, directed at the actual users of these spaces. Aguilera’s artistic idiom is direct. It may be in the form of an abstract drawing on the floor or blue paint that reanimates an empty swimming pool, returning to it its former vibrancy. Thus Aguilera’s works are that which art must be: communication, visual language and a clearly spoken “yes” to the public, be it actually experienced or fictionally constructed.
Grit Weber 2011
*Published on the occasion of the exhibition km 500_4 – "Pakplatz_ parken auf eigene Gefahr" Kuntshalle Mainz , vom 26.11.2010 bis 15.01.2011
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DIE EIGENEN FEDERN / Verónica Aguilera spielt mit der Zeit. Wie eine Regisseurin am Schneidetisch lässt sie die Zeit in ihren Arbeiten mal schneller, mal langsamer laufen, um den Alltag und ihre Erlebnisse und Erfahrungen genauerer Betrachtung zu unterziehen Auf diese Weise bringt sie Dinge zum Vorschein, dieim täglichen Fluss der Geschehnissekaum oder keine Beachtung finden. Und es wird klar, dass das vermeintlich immer Gleiche über eine Vielzahl von Variationen und Abweichungen verfügt. Alle ihre Arbeiten sind konzeptionell und prozessual angelegt. Entweder bilden sie bestimmte Abläufe und Handlungen ab oder sie dokumentieren Stationen eines längerfristig angelegten Prozesses, in dessen Verlauf sich eine Arbeit auch wieder komplett verflüchtigen kann. Sie begleitet die Dinge und die Dinge begleiten sie. Für eine Weile, einen Moment. Was wir zu sehen bekommen sind Spuren, Überbleibsel und Momentaufnahmen, Objekte und Orte im Transit, aufgeladen mit Geschichten und Erinnerungen. Es sind die sich im Laufe der Zeit ergebenden Veränderungen von Materialien, Stimmungen und Bedeutungen, die Aguilera interessieren. Woran machen wir den Wert einer Sache, eines Ortes, eines Gefühls oder eines Moments fest? In der Ausstellung „Sich mit fremden Federn schmücken“ nimmt Verónica Aguilera sich der flüchtigen Momente des Glücks und des Erfolgs an: Dem gewonnenen Wettkampf, der erhaltenen Auszeichnung, dem Herausgehobensein aus der Masse durch eine besondere Leistung. Also jenen Momenten, die in Erinnerung bleiben und mitgeteilt werden sollen und sich deshalb in Objekten, Zeichen und Ritualen konkretisieren. Und sie führt uns vor Augen, wie diese unablässig ihre Stellung innerhalb des Wertschätzungs- und Wertschöpfungskreislaufs verändern.
Wiebke Grösch und Frank Metzger
*Published on the occasion of the exhibition Verónica Aguilera – Sich mit fremden Federn schmücken im 1822-Forum der Frankfurter Sparkasse, Fahrgasse 9, Frankfurt, vom 02.02.2010 bis 06.03.2010
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HER OWN PLUMES / Verónica Aguilera plays with time. Like a director at the cutting table, in her work she sometimes speeds time up and sometimes slows it down so that she can submit everyday life and her adventures and experiences to closer examination. In this way, she uncovers things that are hardly or not at all noticed during the daily flow of events. And it becomes clear that what has always seemed the same actually boasts a large number of variations and deviations. All Verónica Aguilera’s work takes a conceptual and process-oriented approach. She either illustrates certain procedures and activities or documents over a longish term the phases of a process in the course of which a work can also appear to disappear into thin air. She follows things and they follow her. For a while, a moment.
What we are presented with are traces, remnants and snapshots, objects and places in transit, laden with stories and memories. It is the changes in materials, moods and meanings that take place over time which interest Aguilera. What is it that makes a thing, a place, a feeling or a moment important to us? In the exhibition “Sich mit fremden Federn schmücken”(To adorn oneself with borrowed plumes) Verónica Aguilera looks at those fleeting moments of happiness and success: a won competition, a received award, the fact of being made to stand out from the crowd because of a special achievement. In other words, at those moments that remain in our memories, that are meant to be communicated and that therefore assume concrete dimensions in the form of objects, symbols and rituals. And she makes it clear to us how these items unremittingly change their role in our cycles of appreciation and valuation.
Wiebke Grösch and Frank Metzger
*Published on the occasion of the exhibition Verónica Aguilera – Sich mit fremden Federn schmücken im 1822-Forum der Frankfurter Sparkasse, Fahrgasse 9, Frankfurt, vom 02.02.2010 bis 06.03.2010