Of Sugar
On the other hand, I eagerly took advantage of that privilege of childhood which allows beauty, luxury, and happiness to be things that can be eaten: in the rue Vavin I would stand transfixed before the windows of confectioners’ shops, fascinated by the luminous sparkle of candied fruits, the cloudy lustre of jellies, the kaleidoscopic inflorescence of acidulated fruit-drops – green, red, orange, violet: I coveted the colours themselves as much as the pleasures they promised me. […] the pink of the sweets used to shade off into exquisite nuances of colour, and I would dip an eager spoon into their brilliant sunset. […] Mama would take her seat at the grand piano to accompany a lady dressed in a cloud of tulle who played the violin and a cousin who performed on the cello. I would crack between my teeth the candied shell of an artificial fruit, and a burst of light would illuminate my palate with a taste of black-currant or pineapple: all the colours, all the lights were mine, the gauzy scarves, the diamonds, the laces; I held the whole party in my mouth.
Simone de Beauvoir
Excerpt from Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (Simone de Beauvoir), 1958
In this project, recollection and childhood memories are an important part of González’s work. As an artist, she takes an interest in little details and everyday rituals, using a sculptural and pictorial process to transform childhood activities like dancing, playing with a ball, celebrating a birthday or going to the park.
Here Gonzalez’s work centers on closely observing processes as simple as a game or a family party and reinterprets them as if placing her own reality under a magnifying glass. González begins from a microcosm of pleated skirts and the folds in paper scallops and, through a controlled color palette, creates a parallel universe where memory and reality once again unite through daydreams and give way to a new form of collective memory.
This is a work that, through meticulous craft and various techniques, magnifies childhood moments and gives them a new, outsized, nearly absurd scale.
