No Absolutes
Contemporary Art from the Region
October 8, 2000 - January 7, 2001
Catalogue Essay - Connie Arismendi
Connie Arismendi
Connie Arismendi looks to family and uses natural materials to create
objects that offer comfort both through the familiar and through suggestions
of physical comfort. In Tree of Life, she builds a colossal candelabra
that is also a tree. The candles bear elusive portraits of members of
her family. The form was inspired by a huge candelabra in the cathedral
in Milan, an icon that she recalls as one of both beauty and horror. The
candles transform the ordinary into the liturgical. They convey a sense
of the ephemeral and vulnerable in contrast to the solidity of the metal
tree, and of the duration of a life in contrast to the eternal.
Arismendi creates metaphors of fragility in all her works. In The Pull of Life, she uses velvet cushions as receptacles for growing orchids. During the period of the exhibition, some of the plants will die. But she offers physical comfort and beauty to balance loss. The sense of luxury conveyed by the velvet and orchids is contradicted by their placement on the floor, a disjunction that defies the offer of comfort.
Arismendi fuses metaphors of nature and relationships in Entrelazados. Two potato vines grow separately yet they twine together. The veil surrounding them bespeaks privacy, or the wish for it, since we can look through it to glimpse this conceit of intimacy.
In Ty y Yo (You and I), a simple pairing of a sugar and creamer suggests both difference and relation. They are a matched set, referencing family in the worn and treasured objects.
Marilyn A. Zeitlin
Director/Chief Curator
Arizona State University Art Museum
Return to the No Absolutes exhibition
For more information contact John Spiak at spiak@asu.edu.
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