ART CRITICISM · 02 August 2024
The Italo-Mexican architect and sculptor Chelita Riojas Zuckermann is a wise artist who blends the rigor of technique with the poetry of form.
From the first visual approach, an attentive and sensitive observer is emotionally involved and encouraged to delve deeper into the creative journey of this extraordinary messenger of visual emotions.
In turn, to better understand her creative personality, I carefully examined her body of work and posed specific questions about her research.
- What materials do you use?
I work with uncolored mirrored aluminum sheets, hammered uncolored mirrored aluminum, and anodized aluminum in various colors. They are thin sheets—ranging from 0.5 to 1 mm—because if they are thicker, they cannot be bent by hand. If I need thicker sheets, I join two to four of them. I’ve always loved creating objects by hand, and I’ve always been fascinated by entering hardware stores to see if I could find something to assemble or build. So, in 2016, I found these aluminum sheets, which, due to their texture, made me think of plants. I bought them along with some sheet metal scissors. When I got home, I flipped through a book and decided to create agave plants, which are typical of Mexico, where I was born and lived until 2006.
- What mechanical tools do you use?
To cut the aluminum, I use a mechanical shear and sheet metal scissors. To bend, I use rudimentary methods since I use my hands, and to create uniform curves, I use PVC pipes of various diameters.
To join the aluminum sheets, I use a drill to make holes in the plates, which are then joined with stainless steel and/or galvanized bolts and nuts, and with colorless and colored aluminum rivets. I also use a compressor (for the rivets), pliers, screwdrivers, and clamps. Sometimes I use hinges.
- How do your inspirations come to life?
Usually, ideas come to me during the night. I wake up, and I already know what I’m going to do. If it’s an insect, I study its shape, dimensions, and how it moves. I also research its function in nature, its symbolic meaning not only in history but also in legends and various cultures. Then I determine the size and make all the calculations to ensure the work is harmonious and proportionate to reality. I proceed the same way with all my other works, whether they are plants, animals, or people.
A talented creator of visionary forms, Chelita Riojas Zuckermann is a sculptor of solar reflections, opposing the melancholy of shadow, revealing the expressive mutations of light, and trusting in the perceptive sensitivity of the observer. Her plastic messages are full of sweetness, like the Girl with Balloon; sumptuous and polychromatic, like the marvelous Butterfly; intense and spiritual, like the Angel; present and wise, like the Gymnast with Ribbon. They are mirrors of executional intelligence, like Pegasus, the restless winged horse that landed directly from Greek mythology onto a shore outside of time and history, yet translated into a thoroughly contemporary language. In other words, a symphony of elements, where the mythical icon turns into shining flesh.
To approach Chelita Zuckermann’s plastic constructs without cryptic intellectualism, one must catch the flickering reflections on the surfaces, revealing the reflection of a solar soul. The variables of mirrored light transmit the illusion of form completeness, where empty spaces insinuate themselves like musical pauses. Furthermore, visual clarity—such as in the Shining Agave and Cactus Flower—becomes a dance in the open air, where the apparent fragility of aluminum highlights its narrative function, and where the sparkling reflections under the sun give new meanings to the sterility of the material.
The communion with nature, insects, the human figure, and angels with transparent wings expresses the personality of a sculptor free from the conceptual confines of contemporary art. She grants full freedom to the flow of intuition, seizing it, recording it through preparatory mental sketches; one notices her passion in approaching and balancing the primary idea with the final construct, elevated to a tangible symbol through arcane lights and delicate transparencies. Static yet mobile presences, realistic yet abstract, are the reflections of an executive act that reveals the secret truths of a poetess.
Paolo Levi
LETTER AND POEM ABOUT ANGELS FROM PROF. PAOLO LEVI TO CHELITA
Dear Chelita,
My answer is affirmative to the question of whether your aluminum works have the sweet and mysterious transparency of Mother Nature; they are precious dedications to crickets, bees, butterflies.
But when the presence of Angels is introduced into the repertoire, the scenic territory changes substantially.
In this regard, I would like to quote a few lines from
Harold Bloom, the recently deceased literary critic, taken from his valuable essay Anatomy of Influence, which seem to direct the verses I have
dedicated to you: "To critique in the true sense of the word is to think poetically about poetic thought." That is, if I used the usual prose, your poetic
creatures would remain in a state of permanent silence, in an anonymous, static condition. And the observer would be completely devoid of revelations about
their spiritual filigree.
Dress the Archangel of your knowledge,
opening to the white wings of the wind,
between the immanent bars of the uncertain,
you will see again the randomness of existence.
Loving match in the mirror,
whirlpool of man's maturity,
while the angel will fall asleep astonished
you will peel the chastity of the score.
Listen to the violin concerto,
observing the viola of breath.
The angel will fulfill your destiny,
telling you the heavenly chronicles
of cherubs with modest feathers
dedicated to the dawn to tune the lyres,
soft cloud with airs of comfort
in the infinite change of the Garden.
Song of the morning rhapsody
magical flute along the flowerbeds,
the yellow canary angel sighs
The sky is born from a thousand blues,
where the strings of the lyre play.
Paolo Levi
