Seeing Paloma Torres’ lone conceptual ceramic sculpture at the Fernando García Ponce-Macay Museum in Mérida, Mexico, triggered that rare and magical eye/brain art experience, that sumptuous moment when all connection with the body disappears, and the electrical connections between seeing and understanding glow. It is uniquely transportive. To paraphrase Emma Thompson in her role as a ranting late night talk show host, she said, “While it is possible to ‘like’ several things, technically, you can only have one favourite”. Well ‘technically’ that may be true, my ‘multi-favour-ist’ tendencies do persist, and I want to immediately add the work of Paloma Torres to my hallowed short list.
The etherial nature of her work is difficult to capture in photographs, but someday you might be in the same city, museum, or gallery and spot one of her sculptures. Take that opportunity to walk around it. Rest. Let your eyes see what they are seeing. Witness the raw merge with the smooth, the mat interrupt the gloss, and the smoky darkness give way to the understated light. All in, it is cerebral champagne and if Emma ever sees Paloma’s work, I suspect that she, too, will embrace multi-favourite-ism.
These close-ups attempt to reveal the subtlety of the Paloma Torres’ sculpture, but fail to do her work justice. For a deeper insight into Paloma and her work please visit her web site: www.palomatorres.com; or at https://www.instagram.com/palomatorres1/; as well as: http://palomatorres.com/s/obra/ceramica
How does one paraphrase such an extensive biography?
In brief, Paloma Torres was born in Mexico City in 1960. She obtained both a Bachelor of Visual Arts degree and a Masters in Color Engraving from the National School of Plastic Arts of the UNAM, and studied in Paris. She participated in several international residencies in Mexico, Calcutta, Canada, Austria and China. Her teaching credits include professorship at the Universidad Iberoamericana and the National School of Painting, Sculpture and Engraving “La Esmeralda” and she also taught courses and held conferences at various institutions within Mexico. Torres’ international exhibition credits are equally extensive. They include shows in Paris, Berlin, Beirut, Doha, Kuwait, Bangkok and San Francisco along with more than one hundred collective exhibitions and fifty-three individual shows. Naturally, her work is held in several public, private and international collections.
