UNA PIEDRA EN EL ZAPATO, PERLA KRAUZE

Walls of stones in the countryside, mountain cairns, pyramids and dolmens, sanctuaries and idols, churches, synagogues and mosques, so many carved or simply accumulated and stacked stones come into the sight of everyone anywhere in the world. Many children recollect pebbles that they keep as treasures. I had the habit of putting in my pocket a stone recovered from the bottom of the abysses I explored. The stones are silent witnesses that narrate the geomorphology of the planet, the cooking of its mineral elements throughout its 4 and a half billion years of history. They keep the memory of ancient times when the sun was not black but a reflection or rather a replica of the luminous star that continues to warm our lives.

I discovered the meaning of the black sun mentioned by Antonin Artaud by reading David Herbert Richards Lawrence’s story of the Hopi’s dance of the snake he attended in 1924 in Arizona. The black sun is the incandescent center of the earth deprived of access to light since the first continental crusts formed 4 billion years ago. Each next stage of the formation of the earth left rocks that are witnesses of antediluvian times, reliquaries.

The mineral is the raw material of Perla Krauze’s work that collects different types of stones wherever her insatiable curiosity drives her. Real stones, carved or not, participate in their invented environments. Many artworks are wall or floor settings designed to stage square and other eccentric stones. One of the techniques used repeatedly by Krauze to produce her paintings is frottage, with which she records the work of stone-cutting tools or the texture of rough rocks. The stretched and nailed canvases on wooden frames offer the appearance of irregular grids or maps. Another technique is to lift the mold from rock surfaces directly where they are. I had the privilege of attend one of these specific volumetric logging operations on April 27, 2021 on a ridge in Pedregal de San Ángel. The subject was a piece of petrified lava. The result is a black resin that gives the illusion of being real, although we can find out its fakeness without having to touch it by turning around and observing it, realizing that the verse is identical to the reverse, something that is impossible in nature.

Water mirrors, sheets of lead and cast aluminum participate in the creation of this new three-dimensional still life, which most of Perla Krauze’s work meetings become.

-Michel Blancsubé