Nanda Botella

Nanda Botella is an obsessive creator, a tireless worker, as evidenced by the impressive installation that she has created for the IVAM, who relies on chance, which is not a ‘mechanism’ or a given strategy, but a process of production of differences that has many forms. In her paintings and collages, she combines signs and scribbles, writing and color stains, the textual and what is sewn, the will of the whole and the pleasure of fragmentation, in a poetic of footprints that takes advantage of the repetitive elements, achieving to make the unexpected arise. We can understand the aesthetics of Nanda Botella as a collage of memories and dreams, from the pieces in which there are, literally, objects interwoven with writing and fragments of cloth, to the installation of the angels (displayed in the Palau de la Música in 2012) that might be interrogations from dreams that are floating in our imagination. Nanda Botella invites us to enter, from paintings to installations, in an area of special light, emerged from an intense experimental purpose. We cannot doubt that there is a constant concern in materials, ranging from the elementary to compounds, in her proposal. The installation created specifically for the IVAM is a strong materialization of Nanda Botella’s desire to involve the viewer both physically and emotionally. A metal structure serves as an extended ‘frame’ for a huge amount of kiln fired ceramic pieces, made one by one. For months, Nanda Botella has worked in a factory in Manises, making those elements that break again with the geometric stiffness, perforated and subjected to the fingerprints, folded and differentiated to produce a total effect of life that multiplies and transforms itself. Painting has expanded to become a vertebrate place where we have to find an unprecedented, beautiful and different time. Nanda Botella Vertebrados exhibition that it is hold at gallery 8 presents an installation made in between 2013 and 2014 that consists of two assembled iron structures and more than 4000 enamelled ceramics pieces that, as a sort of shed invites the museum spectator to go in and enjoy the materials as well as the play of lights and shadows that ceramic project onto the gallery space. Two models of this same work are shown, and a mixed media polyptych on  linen that reinforce the main work. At the museum entrance, at the terrace, there is a fountain that the artist has specially conceived for this exhibition where the play of lights, water and movement of its pieces gives an idea of her creative skills. Fernando Castro Flórez.