Nicolasa Navarrete
Bleistiftsmaterialismus

Nicolasa Navarrete could be described as a philosopher with a pencil. Her works look like the hybrid product of a traditional drawing class and Walter Benjamin's concept of the dialectical image. Her drawings are realist, based on found images and paired with largesize quotations, from pop songs, headlines or even private conversations with friends. “Der historische Index der Bilder sagt nämlich nicht nur, dass sie einer bestimmten Zeit angehören, er sagt vor allem, dass sie erst in einer bestimmten Zeit zur Lesbarkeit kommen”, Benjamin explains about the dialectical image in Das Passagen-Werk (1927-40). “Das gelesenes Bild, will sagen das Bild im Jetzt der Erkennbarkeit, trägt im höchsten Grade den Stempel des kritischen, gefährlichen Moments, welcher allem Lesen zugrunde liegt.” Benjamin used his own commentary to turn quotes into dialectical images; Navarrete works more associatively: for example, she pairs her drawings of a found photograph of 19th-century English teenager working as a miner with her hand-written notes about finding the image, arguing with a friend about politics and listening to Woodie Guthrie's Miner's Song (c.1944): “Don't just transcribe a direct quote from Engels-Why not? I asked.” Here and elsewhere, the found image and found words fuse the past and the present to offer an illuminating glimpse of a totality while remaining separate from it. Benjamin worked with the idea of montage by arranging his comments and quotes in a provocative way for the page of a book. By contrast, since Navarrete fills up the surface of her drawings, she applies the idea of montage by hanging them in precise constellations, whose fullness recalls a Petersburger Hängung, and by using four nails at each corner, as if crucifying the works to the white cube. Navarrete sees these constellations, not as a common space, but a common time.

Text: Jennifer Allen
Jennifer Allen is a writer living in Berlin


http://www.nicolasanavarrete.com/