Abrazando el Ayer

Two dense sheets of paper overlap in a fractured geometry where the support renounces passivity to claim a sculptural condition. The upper vertical block extends beyond the cut line of the base plane, altering the work's regular perimeter and generating an austere relief. At its center, a dense, vaporous stain of soot or carbon spreads in ashen gradations, as though a residual heat had imprinted the fleeting shadow of a body or an absent object onto the pale fiber.

The background plane, broader and stained by watery washes in ochre, gray, and rust tones, bears the atmospheric weight of the composition. In the lower right quadrant, the surface opens through an incision that tears the cellulose: a horizontal slit whose edges curl outward revealing a dark hollow, a restrained wound that introduces real light and physical shadow into the paper's thickness. A few centimeters from this scar, the industrial Fabriano watermark functions as an unexpected graphic anchor, a trace of order amidst the controlled chaos of oxidations and washes that traverse the plane.

This dialectic between aggression and subtlety defines the character of the piece. Time is not described here through figurative signs, but rather through the actual fatigue of materials (combustion, damp erosion, the manual tearing of the weave). In Abrazando el Ayer, Karen Clachar treats paper as a sensitive skin that retains trauma and sediment. What remains before our gaze is a silent palimpsest, an architecture of strata where remembering is equivalent to holding, without drama or superfluous additions, the indelible marks of lived experience.