“I’m especially attracted to the vulnerability of [memory]: what happens when a disorder disrupts the pattern that codes our thoughts”.
Almost Nothing to Remember presents a body of works on paper by Argentine artist Lucia Warck-Meister. Completed during her residency at Miami arts and culture non-profit, Oolite Arts, the series of works comments on the symbolism of water and fire in many cultures and religions across the globe. Water has been used throughout history as a symbol of purity, fertility, renewal, wisdom, change, and most importantly, life. Similarly, fire has been used to represent passion, hope, desire, hell, and eternity.
Warck-Meister’s work is dark and delicate, using these interpretations of the elements in subtle but strong abstract forms and figures which, when combined with the thoughtful use of materials, create a visual narrative that educe the concept of memory and its fragile nature. Lucia Warck-Meister states “I’m especially attracted to the vulnerability of [memory]: what happens when a disorder disrupts the pattern that codes our thoughts”.
In works like Drawing Flux I, the conceptual use of material supports the idea of the loss of memory; like charcoal being the aftermath of what used to be wood, a broken and shattered memory that changed its form with time. In the same manner, the artist uses glass and glue to mimic water, an element that adapts to its vessel with ease, just like memories do. This abstraction advocates the idea of a forgotten memory, a vague and blurred shape that can remind the audience of how it feels when one is trying to reminisce about something from a certain place and time in one’s personal history.
Warck-Meister’s work addresses personal memories that have faded through time into almost nothing; into an abstraction that recalls movement, elements, symbols, and figures that were once part of a specific time and place in Warck-Meister’s own history but after time’s effect, have turned into something almost unrecognizable.