Ana González belongs to a generation of enterprising artists who cultivate their trade within the narrow thresholds of aesthetics. Her career, nourished by a very important professional experience, is poised between architecture, photography, publishing and painting.
As contemporary as she is conservative, González distances her art from provocation, denunciation and finger pointing by taking a stand in the tranquil waters of memory. Her strengths—her dedication and trade—provide a generous and inclusive helping hand for the preservation of childhood memories within elements of our collective culture. These qualities take root in others, in the program she has developed hand-in-hand with a broad community of displaced peoples, forced from their land, who she hires for the work of designing artisanal objects. This activity has contributed a range of references that nurture her by providing the formulas for objectifying her work, which results in a broad thematic development, from dresses to the letter balls and innertubes that she presents in her new series “OA…sin moverme” (OA… without moving)
With this, Ana formally integrated the pictorial investigations she has been creating, beginning with the series Alicia (winner of multiple awards both within Colombia and abroad) and continuing through Rosita, Bailarinas (Dancers) and Salvavidas (Lifesavers), created from 2006 to 2009, presenting this exception: an obvious change in the chromatic behavior of her paintings, a tonal transition between purple and lime-green. The motifs—like clothing, lifesavers, balls and others present throughout her previous series—breathe the fresh air of a movie that has reached its end. They become light through her serene calm, allowing us to intuit that they will give way to a new period.
Child-like activities like scribbling and dying are intentionally transformed through the techniques in her work. The application of the children’s game “OA…sin moverme…sin reírme…sin hablar…” —where children bounce a ball off the wall while reciting “without moving… without laughing… without talking” etc.— take a decisive step toward action in her work by throwing an ink-covered ball at the wall to leave a mark. This stands in fundamental contrast to the development of González’s painting as it shows a shift that benefits from conceptual coherence over pictorial preciosity. These milestones of development are without a doubt inflection points on shifting sands, where the words exhibited can blur with the fleeting nature of a snap, but they are certainly also crucial moments where an artist like Ana González is tasked with objectifying these reflections in palpable forms charged with an air of renewal.
“OA…sin moverme” has the serenity of a duty fulfilled, as if an intelligent and meticulous response has gone beyond the parallelisms that can emerge when working with forms from a collective culture.
E. Sokoloff