'Anonymous', by Susana Solano

Susana Solano reached great prominence from the late seventies to the nineties. His work is in large institutional collections and was introduced to international circuits. He participated in the Kassel Documenta (1987 and 1992), the Sao Paolo Biennale (1987) and the Venice Biennale (1988 and 1993), among other forums. Likewise, he had important individual exhibitions in museums: Washington DC (1989), San Francisco (1991), Madrid (1992), Berlin (1996), Vienna (1996), etc. It was a time of great euphoria in the market and traditional procedures and languages were recovered, that is: the return to painting and sculpture after the dematerialization of the object and the conceptual practices that until then had have been predominant. Nevertheless, the most restless creators – as is the case with Solano – developed work that sought the limits of sculpture or the way to take it beyond the values that had defined it until then. In this sense, some very significant pieces, for example, are the artifacts in the form of cages, not only because of the procedures and materials but also because they question the notion of volume and space if it is possible to speak precisely of these principles in the his work In this sense, Susana Solano and other sculptors of her generation have sometimes been spoken of as an "anti-form" expression. In any case, it is a work that cannot be conceived without taking into account the previous experiences of the minimal or the poor and in general conceptual art in its various derivations.

In the nineties, however, that generation lost its centrality, with the arrival of new artists and concerns. Although Susana Solano has always had a constant presence in galleries and institutions – we remember her splendid exhibitions at the Suñol Foundation (2014), at the IVAM (2019), at Artur Ramón Art (2022) –, the truth is that his last major retrospective in Barcelona was back in 1999 at the MACBA. The current exhibition at the Vila Casas Foundation, curated by Enrique Juncosa, is presented as a second major and necessary retrospective that aims to review and reinterpret, but also vindicate, Susana Solano and bring her closer to the younger generations.

It is worth saying that the world of Susana Solano is hermetic and resists analysis. She herself has avoided giving explanations. Nevertheless, a symbolic dimension in his sculpture seems undeniable. Enrique Juncosa, with many nuances, has associated the poetics of sculpture with an aesthetic of melancholy that hovers over his entire career.