“Every Shape is a Shape of Time” by Glenda León

The exhibition Every Shape is a Shape of Time explores her art from this perspective, in close association with the notion of self-similarity put forward by Benoît Mandelbrot in his well-known fractal theory: a mathematical way of understanding nature’s infinite complexity.

The notion that certain patterns are reproduced and that they branch out as the scale changes is acknowledged first of all by Glenda León through parallels between her creative work and that of Joan Miró. In her own words, “When not just the doors of the studio but also the Foundation’s archives were opened up to me, I found that I had different points in common with the work of Joan Miró; an artist who used found bits of metal, leaves and branches, among other materials, to create”. She went on to say: “The works that I created with my own hair in 2001 [Each Shape of Time] were chosen for their similarity in spirit and form with many works by Joan Miró, particularly three of his 1971 drawings”.

Every Sound is a Shape of Time is a series of etchings, based on 22 drawings created during the first month of the lockdown. It is partly inspired by an article by Mandelbrot entitled “How long is the coast of Britain?”, one of the first introductions to the fractal theory mentioned above. The etchings consist of the traced lines of different natural phenomena, such as the flight of a butterfly, a river or a mountain, set on top of a pentagram. The similarity of the lines hints at the existence of the same shared energy in their creation, manifested in different states and levels of matter.

Mirage: Hidden Story of the Broken Mirror (Son Boter) follows the same lines. In this large installation, the cracks in the mirror reproduce–as with a reflection–the shape of a tree branch found in the gardens of the Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró a Mallorca. The installation forms part of a bigger series which she embarked on in 2010, fuelled by the intuitive, aesthetically-inspired feeling that the different elements that make up the world around us are all interrelated and that human beings have an intrinsic capacity to influence our reality and to transform the world.

The series of silkscreen prints Contours of the World are inspired by Photo: ceci est la couleur de mes rêves by Miró. Glenda León uses sky blue, like the blotch used by Miró to express the colour of his dreams, to recreate the shapes of different objets trouvés. In this way, she reflects on the similarity between a cloud and a stone, or a puddle of water and a patch of colour on the skin of a cow.

Photo: ceci est la couleur de mes rêves also inspired the sculpture Miró’s Concrete Dream, where the shape of the blue stain of colour acts as a reference in the creation of a mould for casting cement. Through play on words and with the material, a literal–or plastic–attempt is made to interpret the phrase “concrete dreams” and the highly singular way in which Miró portrayed his dreams.