Victoria Ballas Armas
Artist Statement
December 2022
My visual language is an exploration of the depth of the bidimensional space using a variety of materials, mostly of a drawing nature. Using labyrinths, chaotic juxtapositions, recesses, and transparencies, I invite the viewer into a world of infinite planes. Through the overlapping of materials on the flat surface, including the wall, a rhythm emerges using stains, shapes, lines, collage, and a limited palette. In this way an instrument is created to pry into thought, transform space and wander toward abstract possibilities. It is a plastic game of hide and seek, sometimes minimalistic in its composition. By adding and subtracting elements, folding and unfolding, tearing and a use of patterned line, atmospheres of abstraction appear that distance themselves from the graphic exercise and the conventional picture. Details of a global organization, like parts of a universe constructed of light are composed. In some cases, unconventional supports are used such as iron sheets, tar paper, or the wall itself, as well as canvas, paper, and a variety of boards. Collage creates a tangle of depths, intermingled with gesso or thread, papered over or woven, layered to take the observer within. Experimentation with materials that repel one another, like ink and oil pastel add to the vernacular that is a duality reflected in our human interactions. It is a dialogue created and established with materials reflecting in a visual way what it means to be human.
I was born on the East Coast of the United States and have been an artist all my life, making, exhibiting, and teaching art in the United States and South America.