Barrio Escalante, San José

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Escondidas detrás del Vidrio, by Carmen Borrasé. A woman's gaze spies from the background, trapped and duplicated between the walls of two glass bottles.

Carmen Borrasé

Escondidas detrás del Vidrio

Year
2022
Dimensions
50 × 50 cm
Status
Available
Palette
amber, navy blue, brown, cloud white, crystal blue
Brushwork
Polished, smooth brushwork with continuous gradations achieving vitreous transparencies and high-definition specular highlights.

Curatorial analysis

A woman's gaze spies from the background, trapped and duplicated between the walls of two glass bottles. The refraction of light through the transparent vessels fragments this black-and-white face, transforming what could be a conventional still life into an unsettling game of concealment and presence. The amber glass in the foreground glows with almost liquid yellow reflections, while the adjacent bottle offers a cool, bluish profile whose shadow cast against the cardboard backdrop reveals cracks reminiscent of a fractured surface.

The space is constructed through layers that question the limits of pictorial artifice. At the top, a strip of open sky with luminous cumulus clouds seems to promise an opening to the outside, yet it is abruptly interrupted by a brown backdrop taped down at the edges, exposing the staging of the studio. Scattered with surgical precision across the dark satin in the lower plane are everyday items: a sealed plastic package with cookies, a small golden figure, and a handheld mirror whose slanted reflection distorts the surroundings, bouncing the eye back into the painting's own intimacy.

A yellow adhesive note pinned beside the photograph, inscribed with barely legible handwriting, reinforces the confessional scale of the scene. Borrasé deploys remarkable technical mastery across diverse surfaces, making the crinkled polyethylene, the mirror silvering, and the smoothness of the glass compete in optical clarity. This obsession with material detail does not pursue mere illusionism, but rather tensions the status of the observed image: identity remains sealed behind transparent barriers that, rather than connecting, isolate and warp the gazing subject.

Escondidas detrás del Vidrio

More works by Carmen Borrasé

5 works

Available works

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