Susana Gassmann
Micro-residency-Gassmann

Cracks, a new and very interesting theme for the micro-residence that the Cordovan artist Susana Gassman developed in ´ace during the last week of July.

ARTIST STATEMENT
I was always drawn to cracks. Perhaps it is because of its erratic, arbitrary, winding and organic route. Or because they provoke us to investigate their origin, imagine what their depths hide, where they will go next. A crack is associated with the passage of time. To oblivion. Careless. At loss. To what causes pain. It refers to the break of something. To an extreme tension of parts that finally give way to give rise to that ambiguous, dark, threatening area.

In a more hopeful sense, this break is a release of tensions. Everything relaxes, calm appears. Although the fissure remained. So … either it is repaired, or it is forgotten, or it is exchanged for a new, better alternative, in the best of cases. From my experience as a plastic artist and my explorations with the photographic, I revisit my geographical space from the present. I analyze the interaction of the territorial environment with the domestic space, how they dialogue, but also how they confront, as a metaphor for transformation, the rupture of concepts and practices. So I began with geological cracks, moved by a very serious problem of local soils, tangible cracks, those of the earth, those of nature, those of things … In the more than five years that I have been experimenting with the work it was transmuting towards the anthropological and unforeseen places. Intangible cracks, human, collective, those suffered on a large scale throughout history … and also those of the soul … personal, intimate, invisible. Many images are local, others are clippings of what I see on trips, of what affects me as an individual in the world. I mix the personal with the public in images that I fragment to rebuild history as an archive that helps to question what we really do to change. In an attitude of claim and of making visible what we are sometimes unable to see. Because I think that the work of art should not be innocent, that it should destroy convictions, create uncertainty to raise awareness and help re-read this world that is constantly migrating and transforming. The project continues to open, grows and modifies its course … like cracks.