LOCATION: CARMEL, CA
Carolina Muchnik's final exhibition "Los Iluminados" was held in 1997 at the Centro Cultural Recoleta in Buenos Aires. Excerpts from English translation of the exhibit catalog follow:
THE ARCANOS MYSTERY
I'm very proud to have been invited to write the prologue of this retrospective showing, 13 years since the last time C.M exhibited her art at the B.S A.S Museum of Modern Art (MALBA), the same museum where she was invited in 1960 to exhibit at its first international exposition with some of the most important artist of the world including Pollock, De Kooning, Tapies and Max Bill. Carolina 's skills justify the distinguished, overflowing praise. She was bestowed by Guillermo Whitelow and all of the highest critics with many complements.
She has exhibited in the country (Argentina), in Europe, and in the United States, her art traveling through the continents and now is at the Centro de Exhibicion de Recoleta.
Carolina divides her work in series, depending upon the source of her inspiration. We can see "los iluminados" (the illuminated), which is the name of the entire exhibition, "los amantes" (the lovers), " los que piden nacer y los que ya son " (those who are waiting to be born and those who are), and her big series " los musicos" (the musicians) which escapes from the bi-dimensional to become a green toned sculpture series which confirm Romero Brest's intuition when he emphasizes the sculptural aspect of some of her figures .
Vain would be the attempt to place Carolina in a preordained category...Some compare the perceptions of Carolina with those of Blake. I should say they have Biblical and Bosque resonance.
irru
The domain of the fantastic belongs always to the artists who make that a mirror of the illusions, hopes, dreams, and also the fear of human soul. Surrealism? Expressionism? Why categorize? Why not just accept this point of view of the artist without worrying about other things more than their artistic value?
Observe the placement of the elements, the use of space from which there emerges a silence that seems to speak from an archaic world, apparently sleeping but dangerously alive. This kind of artist is Carolina Muchnik, the creator and re-creator of a mysteriously magic world. Look at the paintings closely and see the elaborate, minute detail, and the very careful way she composes the color.
Ernesto Schoo
Carolina Muchnik: A rich, vibrant spirit like hers doesn't see reality. In a conventional way and in other ways she dreams it. She is involved in the magic and mysterious. So the manipulation of the artistic reality is welcome because it is not to impress. It is to show deep experiences.
Profesor Guillermo Withelow
director Museo de Bellas Artes
Concerning the Nueva Figuration, we point to Carolina Muchnik who is a perfect example of the movement, better than any attempt ever made here in Paris.
George Boudulle
Paris
In the days that we can't escape from the dizziness of a recently conquered space and the excitement of this conquest, Carolina Muchnik's paintings create a poetic new space conceived for meditation: the dreams, perfected by performance and rare colors, not however, in a clear representation of this real world.
L.Avenir-Paris
Carolina Muchnik offers to us a very inspired mix of paintings, she engages in series after series of her expressionist vibrations and the coherence of an amazing technique...Her non-stop productivity finds the way to give expression to seductive and heart-breaking wonders which move in her inner world.
This exposition reveals her own view; she had many ways to re-create a powerfully magic world and it's rich color. The painter and the sculptor both live inside Carolina Muchnik; they cease the competition to synthesize with one another.
Dr. Marcos Aguinis
Secretaria de Cultura de la Nacion
Carolina Muchnik owns a great sense of colors and composition, perfect observation, and well known art secrets. Her paintings break the passive stationary belonging to the pictorial reality.
Raul H Castagnino
Presidente Academia de Letras
Carolina Muchnik meets all of the challenges with the only possibility that is valid for the painting, creating a relationship that exists between the graphic element of nature and the suggestions that are presented by the human figure. Especially for the faces that appear in the works…because they perform that double function in her work: the jewel like manifest of color applied to a scheme with infinite parts with the minute details of a tapestry.
So that is the way that the artist can satisfy the demand of a painting that seems to need a painter's palette, full of color from the dematerialized structure of the prism.
Eduardo Baliari
The pictorial scene of the dreamy world she perceives is very elaborate, yet nonetheless is fresh, rich in colors, unique in quality, and varied in composition. She manifests a very strong internal attitude.
H.A. Parpegnoli
Director del Museo de Arte Moderno (MALBA)
Her contribution cannot be appreciated only for the real value; she opens a window to the illusion and the dream in a strange combination.
Carolina Muchnik reveals ways to the stars to the people who live in this Apocalypse.
F.G Brussels,
Belgium
We can say about the work of Argentine painter Carolina Muchnik that her style is on the vanguard because the vanguard came to her during the years she was there. In the core of this brilliant Argentine artist co-exists two painters in one. Like two topics, one over the other, one non-figurative, in which exists a wonderful composition and harmony of the colors and the other expressionist where the human being is portrayed by the artists’ brush with admirable power.
L.E.M Expres
Paris
... Carolina Muchnik's paintings make me think of the music of Alan Berg; those redden tones reflect those of a hidden and endless cosmic fire which establishes a connection between the two works and to think of the paintings in sounds and music in colors is a way, and I don’t believe is a deviation in order to understand both. From that hidden fire the paintings are born: that vibrate, that tremble, that expand in flight; the composition is always original, rich in discovery, changing. Her creatures have a relationship with those that inhabit the world of the " pre-rafaelista" England , the world of Browning and Brune, with the flash of William Blake.
Carolina Muchink is one of the unique examples of artists. She doesn’t imitate anybody and she doesn’t let the tendencies of the moment seduce her. Her work is disturbing, made by using a free and strong technique full of colors.
Cesar Magrini
Argentina
Painting for Carolina Muchink, where the composition is always original, we see that for her the work is a way of catharsis, an exorcism, a liberation.
C.L.L
This exposition is primarily paintings with vigorous and rich essence well employed. A first look produces an impression which response a her expressionism intention, a little disquieting. Carolina Muchnik is part of the international center of painting of the Actuality Fantastic and Magic. The magic, the oniric vision, the intuition of the "mas allá" has inspired many artists and motivated works of first quality...
Looking at the works carefully, one by one, in detail, we can appreciate tones, veladuras, ruggedness, sought and found in the intimate dialog between the artist and the painting that have already born deep feelings and which is necessarily translated, without betrayal, to a virgin cloth. This is about sensibility and knowing how to paint. The complicated mental process generates many emotions, but then there’s still the difficult step in knowing how to make an artistic expression.
M.E.Prieto Barral
Paris
The European experience of Carolina Muchnik makes her topics richer. This work is in essence still the same one that fascinates us before, but taken now to a new representation level. Those where the duality play expression-fantasy until they coincide.
As a result these works speak for themselves; we can say without any doubt: neofiguration. And yes, sometimes we can perceive the taste of James Ensor, the spectator meets always with that fun, ambulatory character all of us become when we come into a coffee shop. Carolina Muchnik gives a real image of the man. Her tribulation appears in the expression I already mention. There’s so much anguish and pain in the vivisection the painter intends. In that way Carolina Muchnik's paintings follow the laws for a proprietary process.
Hallucination, phantasmagoria, drama. Her work follows that orientation. Look for new and more real images if it’s possible...The images don’t emerge by the will of the painter but they also compose themselves, in spite of her, by the empire of the technique and the materials used.
G.M.
