Gwladys Alonzo & Erik Bendix

ETERNAL RETURN
January 25, 2020

Gwladys Alonzo
Where do we look for eternity? Rigidity and monumentality seem to be the obvious answers, but ignoring other alternatives would be imprudent. Her sculptural practice explores the tensions between the liquid and the stiff, the mundane and the extraordinary; fragility and the eternal. In a world eager to build more, material opportunities are limited by the greedy ambition of development. Gwladys seeks to challenge these restrictions with irreverent virtuosity. The same concrete that erects structures with desires of immortality becomes delicate. Its rigidity now appears feathery. The favorite materiality of development flirts with new aspirations. In this eagerness to stretch the possibilities of the material; the search for the eternal is diluted. Like a beast that refuses to be tamed, the concrete slips away and writhes until time permits. Perhaps by freezing the movement and strength of this mundane beast, Alonzo's sculpture makes us reconsider our desires for eternity.

Erik Bendix
It arises from the recursive. They are the patterns of repetition and the variation in them from which a series of elastic questions are articulated, which are not intended to be answered. The almost gravitational attraction to repetition and recurrence is perhaps a reflection of his formation as a philosopher or trace of his complex and rugged upbringing. Bendix poses a set of references: of elastic limbs, of hands with white gloves, of strokes that become gelatinous and blocks of color contained in thick defined edges. Cartoons that are reflected, that are repeated but not copied. Repetitive compositions that mirror. Bendix's pictorial approach seeks to inhabit the gap between the ubiquitous and the original, a place where the repetition of what we thought familiar becomes abstract. A site that we refuse to visit, because it houses more vaporous questions than concrete solutions. In the end, melancholy, the shared graphic imaginary and desaturated nostalgia are more comfortable, more familiar places; from where to face our own anxieties, recurrences and returns.

- Armando Quintana