Oscar Abraham Pabón talks about his work
Saturday, February 9, 2019Translation:
My name is Oscar Abraham Pabón and I’ll tell you about El objeto específico “Stacks,” a work from 2012. At that time I was interested in the relativity that could emerge in the idea of a specific object taken from the minimalist sculptural tradition when it is related to a cultural tradition of a particular country. I realized that the physical characteristic of industrial materials is also joined with very important qualities and materials. It’s an anthropological and social dimension that denotes the material in certain contexts. A stack of the fired clay bricks used in home construction in Venezuela and in many parts of Latin America possesses emotional charges and connotations responding to the expectations of being able to build a house to live in. There is a need, a desire; there is faith in the mix. That’s why I was interested in the bricks being observed in a simple and repeated progression, and that it gives the sensation of levitating, but with the help of an internal structure. That’s why, in a semi-hidden way, you see small statues or figurines that are very common in the popular beliefs of Venezuela, as in the case of Dr. José Gregorio Hernández. I like the idea of a meaningful figure for a cultural tradition founded on myths and beliefs, like the Catholic tradition; it can also share and relate to a discourse from a minimalist aesthetic just as it’s deposited by the discourse of the material. This work unfolds a mythical story, but also a historic and local discourse.