8. Event

Magdalena Fernández's works are not only "objects," things, structures, videos or installations; they are also processes, developments, becomings. They are, consequently, an "event" in which signification—the production of meaning—takes place on the basis of the plexus of relations that is established both within the work (in its happening) and between the work and different contexts: immediate (place), historical (artistic tradition), intellectual (references to nature), formal (rational–geometrical), and phenomenal (with the spectator). So it is that the object—the structure or moving image—operates as a sort of trigger that sets off these different systems of relations, constituting a meaning that, because of its own relational condition, is always different.

These object-events have the peculiarity of always being "something" that exceeds their pure presence and into which the "world" is incorporated in different ways, through allusion, remembrance, or metaphor. The experience that they solicit abandons the contemplative attitude and is imposed as a shift, a passage, an immersion. Indeed, we comprehend these object-events when we circulate through them, capturing them in the weave and amalgamation of their modifications, because they are made concrete or realized in the process. As a result, they have been enriched with a plurality of data and discourses that are superimposed on and interwoven with each other. In these object-events, the presence or figure in which they appear to us is neither closed, complete, nor absolute. On the contrary, it is made up of gaps and enigmas, of allusions, riddles and invocations.

Furthermore, in the installations—in their capacity as object-events—one finds the "work," the "world" (nature) and the "spectator" referring to each other, appropriating each other, constituting each other. Among all the components of these object-events—between the physical ones as well as the projected ones, between the discursive as well as the cultural ones—there is a co-belonging, a co-presence thanks to which the work is realized fully in the conjunction of them all. The installation on the terrace of the Museo Amparo is realized only so long as someone is walking across it. Reflecting the sky in sections of the floor, it is always "other," since it registers the changes of the sky and those of the walking. It also strains our ordinary experience by inverting it, and we can elaborate countless reflections (of a scientific, poetic or theological nature) on the "sky" as it is encountered by the gaze.

SP

Beyond the traditional understanding of form and object, Magdalena Fernández reclaims the disclosure of an event at the basis of an experience of nature. The staging of her installations exceeds the logic of presence to allow the essential, constitutive, relational, and agential qualities of nature to emerge onto the surface of her work. The frames of her installations correspond to the structuring of an experience that allows an event to resonate with syntheses, points, lines, extensivities and spatio-temporal functions. The use of new media allows Fernández to challenge the ways of understanding artistic processes, contributing to an exploration of poietic, differential, and radical approaches. The incongruities, juxtapositions, asymmetries, and variations that reoccur in her work, as suggested by the meta-composition of the immersive installation 1iHO008, Homenaje a Hélio Oiticica (2010), disclose an event over the order of abstract, rational models of representation. Between the inner and outer aspects of her installations, Fernández's ethos is described by an inquiry into the potency of nature, the revealing of an event and the awakening of a conscious experience that is perceived through the sonorous and visual effects that echo her compositions. Never intended towards a specific object but rather underlining an ethical concern towards experience, her installations sit between the folding and unfolding of an experience that is carried out through a chain of syntheses, rhythms, and connectivities. The disclosure of an event suggests an inquiry on the essential, structural and constitutive aspects of a radical experience. As evoked by the Díptico (amanecer/atardecer), Homenaje a Soto, (2011-2015), the event that interests Magdalena Fernández corresponds to a natural order and the unity of conscious experience. The chain of traits, points, lines, and signs that the artist addresses in her works inscribes events as a system of multiplicity that is subject to geometrical configurations with margins of freedom and unpredictability.

SB