Paula Dünner is a warm woman with a lively energy, which you can quickly relate to her work, “I'm not good at talking about my art” was her only warning as I got into her car on the way to her workshop. It looked like it was going to rain, and we leave the road behind for a couple of winding turns to find a small green paradise within the gray Santiago, adopted mixed breed dogs playing to their hearts' content in that green vastness under the clouds about to explode were the entrance postcard. “The house was designed by my dad”, she tells me as she walks past, and the large windows light up everything, including one of her works.
A circular staircase takes us to the attic that is her library, workshop, piece, and art warehouse. From there she shares her life with brushes, canvases, pencils, books, cats, figurines and plants, the latter providing textures and many colors to the space, while thousands of details appear and tell stories just by seeing them. It is a silent workshop from where you can see the snowy Andes Mountain range, the treetops, and the sky. In the center, two tables that are wide and well lit, works in progress, packaged works, full pencils, shapes made of fabrics and stuffed, pins... “magic happens here”, I'm thinking to myself when she tells me that she also did engraving for a long time through etchings, serigraphs, and lithographs and the conversation begins.
Paula grew up among artists and architects and as a true reflection of her biography, she always knew what she would dedicate her life to. She studied art at the Universidad Católica de Chile, one of the most prestigious in the country, and from there she immersed herself in endlessly arduous and pleasurable work, carving out a fantastic and personal universe from the world of biology, but emancipated from it, which it opens and branches from simple, curved and sinuous shapes to complex scenarios.
Regarding the 2019 exhibition “El mundo de las formas” held in the art gallery of the university where she studied, the visual artist Cristian Silva describes the world of the author with the following words: "Without a doubt, it is about a playful space, a secret alphabet of echoes, vibrations and resonances, of bubbles, wefts, nets and membranes, of digestive, nervous and respiratory systems (which sustain each other from the painting): a sweet potpourri of archipelagos, reefs, wild fruits. As if it were a tangle of necklaces, earrings and bracelets stored in a jewelry box, or a large plate of psychedelic noodles, the vast majority of her compositions have no beginning or end, but rather are an endless continuum, generally winding.”
A living work advances unpredictably
Paula Dünner's work is alive and unpredictable, it opens and extends into two great possibilities: Flat and Volumetric works. The first linked to abstract art, with flat colors avoiding the realism given by light and volume. The volumetrics, on the other hand, generate spatial sensations, whether real or simulated, in this case through the use of fabric.
The works belonging to “Cultivos” (2014) that we present in Arte Original are oils on canvas. In addition to abstraction, color plays a fundamental role on them, by enriching all the possible relationships between these elements and through it the compositions acquire greater complexity and interest, forming a “psychedelic” visual explosion.
In “Nuevas Células” (2010), the quality of the painting and the meticulous handling of drawing and composition are amazing. Through small brushstrokes, she creates atmospheres, environments full of details in which abstraction and shapes are the protagonists, achieving results that represent the personal way that the artist looks at nature.
Written by Beatriz Palma Astroza,
