CRITICS

Paola Sada Santos, Monterrey, N. L .
The most fantastic dreams we had as children always become dull at the moment of recalling them in the morning. How hard it was to describe to our classmate how terrifying it was the character running after us, how real the color images were. perhaps due this, Ivette Olivare´s work looks so familiar to us, as if at last we could share under full daylight those envisions that entertain us in the most secret corners of dream. Ivette surprises us in the same manner of that child with the power we have lost so long ago: that of spending hours, absorbed in an invented world without no further resource that some type of object found in the garden or in any other nook of our grandparents home.

Ivette canvases are inhabited by characters that do not know about video games or internet. They do not play with things, but play to be something new marvelous: princesses, kings, saints, animals. The artist plays with her memories and wishes, her nightmares and preferred images, taken from history of art and fairy tales. The pleasure of disguising with mother´s clothes and jewels is found in the portraits of princesses with fantastic headdresses, elaborated dress and funny slippers of a medieval lady. Unless the subject is a self-portrait, the hair look like Rapunsel´s, extending to take an active role in the composition. Faces painted by Ivette, although they represent a man or a woman, are childish: porcelain skin, doll-like rosy cheeks, a scarlet little mouth, sparse eyebrows, candid and mischievous almond –shapes eyes. The bodies are also childish, the medieval-style fashions do not expose the body, the mermaid wears a blouse and even a character taking a bath in a tube is dressed. It is the image of innocence defined not as lack of knowledge or sin, but as not having lost the capacity to imagine.

The need to stage in the theater is present in Ivette´s work. As children we staged some home-made plays with audiences of three or four people; in the real world each social or political event is multitudinous show. Ivette conforms many of her paintings as a scenery where fantasy performs. Architectutal elements, such as columns or doors frame the scene. Elegant drapery form the theater curtain and landscapes remind us melancholic scenographies for night scenes of ballet, with solitary cardboard moons and little trees with no leaves.

The search of a personal scenography has its maximum expression in the installation made by Ivette of her bed and living room. The bed is a red velvet and tulle dramatic creation: it is the bed of a queen, of the Sleeping Beauty, the type dream by a child being sure not to own it ever. In fact the strength of bed is her quality of being inaccessible. The branches around it forbid us to approach it. The only way of reaching it would be by breaking that bewitchment, such as the prince waking up the princess with a kiss and taking the thorn woods apart.
In her living room, Ivette cooks her own bewitchment, under the echoes of Lewis Carroll, giving shape and function to a sky or sea blue, where strange bird-like or flower-like girls swim or fly. The key undo the bewitchment is owned by the artist, but we hope she will never disclose it to us.

 

Lee Ortega, New York City 
THE QUINTESSENCE OF IVETTE OLIVARES

To reach the essence of emotion is one of the most difficult tasks of the artist as it requires introspection, awareness and the ability to perceive the world with the pure heart of a child. For many of us it is difficult to find fantasy in our everyday activities or to recognize the humor of even our darkest moments. Ivette olivares offers us these pure moments.

She paints from her imagination, translating her experiences both pleasurable and painful with a twist of fantasy but without losing the honesty from which the emotion is drawn.

The technical and conceptual refinement of these paintings are clearly extracted from the artists Mexican heritage. Each work is of highly illustrative nature with deep varied colors and iconographic references. Simultaneously, Olivares incorporates very personal preoccupations into her works raising real personal issues with which the viewer can immediately identify. The paintings of Olivares come directy from the heart with an honesty that brings, even if for just one moment, the ability to recognize the enchantment and wonder of our surroundings.

 

Irma Bra, Monterrey, Mexico

(My life is pictured in my art work, and believe it or not, it embarrasses me to be so obvious)

As hard as it may seem, Ivette is always back to the same feeling, On each canvas she pretends to exalt love throughout its multiple phases, in the most unlike and often extravagant forms and colors. Ever since she was born, Ivette was meant to be a painter and nothing else.She is chronic and incurably romantic, in love with love, in whichever way is feasible today, yesterday or tomorrow, according to her various moods, either at sunrise or at sunset.

Her precious work where she leaves traces of her daily incidents along with little bits of wishful thinking, unaccomplished so far.Those prejudices and madness thet bound her every so often, as well as slight or great portions of mislead illusions to become one of her sumptuous characters, born out of her most stubborn fancies.

with patience and cautiousness, Ivette strives day in day out to sustain that fragile balance that combines her resolution to be happy with the need to redeem her environment.An ultra sensibility united with the ideal that leads the painter in her inexorable struggle: that which matches her own personal view of reality with the emotion she can convey on each an every spector.

Facebook Icon