With Inner Nature, Augusta Barreda completes three decades of artistic activity, and, announces the path towards a new phase, where her proposals, searches and innovations, present in all her art works, seem to encounter.
Looking back at her work as an engraver, where the sense of space was never absent, together with her preference to emphasize material things and tempt symbolism, Barreda defined strongly her shapes, determined boundaries and attributes with precision, and, declared without fears in favor of the use of techniques, patterns and textures. The diverse series created throughout the years show this constant concern, working without urge, contributing only to the demands of her own requirements and tenacity.
The continuous inquiries that did not submit to a rule or to a dance fashion, took her to work spaces that are always present, not as suggestions, but, objectively materializing them.
From collages to assemblies, the adventure towards volume and recreation with successful atmospheres turned into notorious triumphs of the sculptural works over the eminently graphic ones.
Likewise, the dominant clear presence of the design makes its entrance as organizer.
The artist has denominated “energies” many of her series of works, and, this nominative decision is also an explicit declaration of intention and proposal, before a fundamental adjective.
Likewise, the desire to symbolize is incorporated into the strict formal search, not only to create specific metaphors that could resume and synthesize referred concepts, overall, those related to nature.
If in previous works, stones and minerals seemed to be the main characters, from then on, botanical objects occupied a privileged place in her works. Flowers and leaves appeared as insinuations to recall them in the renowned ‘pompons’, and, nowadays, they impose themselves with an open presence by means of wood, a warm, rich material, polished and polychromed meticulously with precision, emphasizing the solidity, and, at the same time, dressing it with live accents.
Sculptor Augusta Barreda, conceives and presents her work arts with a clear sense of serialization, alternating dimensions and contrasting details, always integrating them in significant groups that refer subtly to community, group, gregarious.
A sense of interrelated and interactive groups that achieve a vibrant vitality, not only making use of the strictly recreational, they achieve to create a bond of spontaneous relationship that every simple and easy acknowledgment achieves.
Inner Nature nurtures all the proposals, and, resolves itself in an ambitious exhibition/installation, where the novelty resides in the almost biographical attributes of the elements.
The evocation of the ideal house, with an ample garden space, a garden full of arrogant flowers, turns into a compatible experience. Only a brief minimalist structure has been necessary to convey the significance.
The absence of a roof, walls and accessories allow the feeling of light and solar heat at the entrance.
The house is open and amicable, it welcomes and protects. Flowers and huge leaves turn into protection and company.
The association with what is human and corporal is immediate. Even though there is an absence of characters, nothing would exist without them.
Furthermore, the other presence is latent. That of the anxious energy to encounter ways to narrate without forcing predetermined judgments. Augusta Barreda invites you to participate in this vital and familiar play.
She fills it with color, and, from it, she ascribes the breath that becomes the major attraction, as well as the trigger for each personal association. The experiences of art and life nourish from this relationship in an indissoluble association where nature and man can be evoked, and, becomes the key of a task that for this artist is imperative for creation and action.
Lima, November 2006
Elida Román