The field of illusion, the texture of desire

CuauhtÈmoc Medina, 2001.Coming from the practice of painting. Carlos Arias understands the surface of his works as a material screen that brings the viewer into a state of illusion. Even if at first glance they look like abstract exercises of colour, texture and light. Arias¥s fabric accummulations are ornamental structures that demand from us the concentrated contemplation of an icon. Arias is fascinated with the visual effects of his textiles: their tendency to produce negative space through their physical accumulation, the way their velvety density contradicts their volume playing with the relationship between figure and ground. Even if some of his works expand into real space, their spirit is not akin to sculpture. Like reliefs, they remain attached to the wall creating a field of images. Arias`s creatures glance back to the history of 1960`s soft sculpture and the "achromes" Piero Manzoni. But he is not concerned so much with the definition of the work of art, than with the psychological effects of manual labour on the surtace of
the material.
Arias`s "pompons" are the last stage in his long involvement with alternative methods of depiction.Since 1994. he left the brush and oils aside to produce embroideries depicting complex figure scenes or self-reflective puns on the analogies between clothes, skin and tapestry. This embroideries achieved refined painterly qualities at the same time that they explored issues of gender in relation to Latin America`s postcolonial visuality.He felt in love with the satinated opalescence ofsilk thread because of its ambiguos spatiality. With time, such qualities pushed the embroidery out from the canvas. In works like Circle to Square (Breast)(1999) embroidery started to claim all architectonic role which soon led him to the topology of works like Penetrated Cube(2001)
In his last series, Arias obliterates our vision with the symptuous physicality of cotton burlap, pompons and decorative fabrics that plunge us into a state of sublime fascination. Some of this materials suggest body parts and not by chance: the pompons he uses are readymade tails for kitsch plush rabbits. In a less narrative way than artists like Cathy de Monchaux. Arias explores the fetishistic overtones of the ornament. In that sense, if Arias abandoned painting it was in part to de-sublimate the encoded values of the tradition. His opulent materiality comments on the erotic investiment of the painter in his canvas. Thus, the protuberances and the effussions of his works are disguised penises, vulva and breasts. Those sexual signatures show that the pictorial surface is a metonimy of our flesh and skin.