Elena Blasco, a feast for the eyes

Can you laugh at a joke you don't understand? Is there a reverse path to the one that abstraction follows when it essentializes the figure? These kinds of whimsical questions occurred to me as I left the Elena Blasco exhibit, with a perplexed smile on my face. I suppose that with this the artist has achieved her objective, because what else can someone expect who titles an exhibition: I saw a little shoe on the brim of my hat.

Elena Blasco, painter and sculptor, debuted in 1976 and has had more than thirty solo exhibitions, some almost anthological, such as Alcalá 31 (2012). Just read the titles of some others (Meringues, they are creamy any At desire, I shake it) to know that Blasco understands painting in a particular way. I confess that since I saw his first work, in the nineties (an Iberian peninsula transformed into a face, whose Pyrenean hair was pulled by a hand) I have followed the trail of who I consider the most naughty Spanish painterI miss Patricia Gadea and taking into account that look of fatima paint with your voice

On this occasion we come across one of his earliest displays of the figure, even if what I was clumsily trying to express at the beginning happens. His images do not represent anything known – vague biomorphisms, sometimes combined with reticular structures – and yet they express emotions! Surprise, vulnerability, mockery, astonishment. Answering my initial question: yes, the abstract can lead to the figurative, just like the inorganic to the organic or chemistry to biology.

[Elena Blasco, laugh with me]

The fact is that Elena Blasco's limitless plastic and chromatic inventiveness creates a universe of happy forms, like bacteria that feed or molecular bonds whose energy could be evoked with a plaid blanket.

Most are drawings on paper –vegetable, of modest dimensions, or Korean, larger–. There are also some tapestries and it is in them that a caricatured, luxuriously colored figure is defined, which immortalizes a kind of queen of a children's party. Finally, we also find some works with volume, fixed to the wall, in plastic material, which continue the language used in the rest.

Elena Blasco creates a universe of joyful shapes, like bacteria that went to a party or molecular bonds whose energy is evoked with a plaid blanket

But there is one singular work, which is disconcerting. It is a somewhat feminine figure – legs and skirt – sectioned at the waist. A saw and a cigarette butt rest on the resulting horizontal plane, as if it were a recently completed job. The absence of what we call a bust in the sculpture is painful, although also full of humor. I don't know exactly what to think: perhaps the artist always has the raw material for his work within him.

And as for the question at the beginning, I passed it on to an acquaintance and she said: “Of course, all it takes is for the person telling it to be funny.” Then I realized that, in effect, this is the point: not so much that Elena Blasco is hilarious or is hilarious –as in the aforementioned sculpture–, but rather that is in a free state. This is how I think he painted this exhibition, which is a feast for the eyes and in which resourcefulness goes hand in hand with talent, tender humor and the wisdom with which he handles each material.

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