Adriana Molder: Fundacao Carmona E Costa.
Amado, Miguel
Since her first solo show five years ago, Berlin-based Portuguese
artist Adriana Molder has developed a singular language and imagery,
dominated by her technique of India ink on tracing paper and her
adherence to a consistent set of references. She uses video and
occasionally photography as well, but her use of these media is
subordinated to her drawing, as she utilizes tracing paper both as
projection surface and for printing photographs. In conceptual terms,
her output analyzes the usage of the face as a symbol in contemporary
imagery. Her portraits are inspired by multiple iconographic sources,
with subjects ranging from pinup girls to criminals to soccer players,
but her primary focus is figures from classic American cinema.
"A madrugada de Wilhelm e Leopoldine" (The Dawn of
Wilhelm and Leopoldine), Molder's latest solo show, consisted of
twelve large-scale drawings that continue her established project but
expand it by adding cityscapes to her imagery. The artist has already
dealt with interior spaces in recent series such as "Hotel"
and "Encontro marcado" (Appointment), both 2006; however, in
this body of work the extension of her range beyond portraiture attains
a new complexity. Molder took her inspiration from Arthur
Schnitzler's novella Spiel im Morgengrauen (Night Games, 1926),
especially two of its young characters, Lieutenant Wilhelm and
Leopoldine, and their mutually dependent relationship. The artist
combined the fin-de-siecle universe of this tale with the modernist
urban imagery of the period between the two world wars, seen in the
Expressionist cinema of the '20s, such as Fritz Lang's
Metropolis (1927). Thus, in the gallery the faces of Wilhelm and
Leopoldine, whether isolated or coupled, were mixed with fragmented
panoramas of cities. The combination of these images generates a
psychologically dense narrative. Love and death are the subjects of
Schnitzler's work, as the writer himself said, and Molder takes
them up in this series.
Molder has based her depictions of Wilhelm and Leopoldine on
Rudolph Valentino and Katharine Hepburn. In her drawings, the serene man
contrasts with the exuberant woman, whose spirit comes across in an
annihilating sidelong gaze or a proud pose. The views of buildings come
from high- and low-angle photographs of New York and Budapest taken by
the artist. The rather ornamental facades are set off against a compact
network of buildings, as in a work showing the Chrysler Building, or
against geometrical lines. However, the effects of light and shadow
achieved through various tonalities of black, white, and gray,
juxtaposed with precise but telling brushstrokes, give the drawings a
stylistic consistency and atmosphere. Molder associates Leopoldine with
a vision of the future and Wilhelm with the decadence of the past;
creating her own allegory, the artist depicts diverse levels of reality
in a sophisticated structure. In the end, the morning of the
exhibition's title emerges as the principal character of her story,
a metaphor for the transience of life.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
--Miguel Amado
Translated from Portuguese by Clifford E. Landers.
