Pola Carmen

It is a grid, a maze, a knit. This is not the case according to Pola Carmen who only sees lines, in one direction and the other, an endless series of abscissas and ordinates, just a drawing without purpose, in short. For fifteen years she has been drawing freehand lines, in oil pastel or oil sticks, on primed canvases stretched like a bow, “as resonant as the skin of a drum”. On the plain backgrounds ranging from gray to coffee cream, its threads tremble and bend, purposely “crooked”. Geranium red, Prussian blue, antique white, lemon yellow, Chinese orange… The single color, bright or muted depending on the mood, tries not to distract the eye which, trapped in this floating net, always manages to pass between its narrow meshes. Pola Carmen, amiable, provides him with an exit door so that he can get lost at leisure before rushing into the breach opened here or there, rarely in the center. The location of this void does not respond to any logic, nor do these interlacings take a real motif as a model, a known object. Pola Carmen admits only one influence, that of the sober and systematic art of Pierrette Bloch, Agnès Martin, Brice Marden, Georges Noël, or Marinette Cueco. These large monochromes whose edges keep, in memory, its successive gestures are called “Possible”. This simple word, designating what can be done or what can happen, is well suited to its easy work, left to the free interpretation of each.

Virginie Huet