SUBFLUVIAL (Gallery text)

In Maggie Nelson’s book, Bluets, she says: “Suppose I were to begin by saying I had fallen in love with a colour. Suppose I were to speak this as though it were a confession […]. It began slowly. An appreciation, an affinity. Then, one day it became more serious. Then (looking into an empty teacup, its bottom stained with thin brown excrement coiled into the shape of a seahorse it became somehow more personal.”

Now, let’s suppose I start by saying that Lulú Lobo fell in love not only with a colour, but also with a technique, with a certain paper, with a specific ink, with a sinuous line. With the colour blue, the printmaking, the pattern paper, the subtle winding line. Her artwork, geometrical and sensitive, starts from units that repeat themselves resulting in a larger shape. Like shapes born from other shapes, the prints float around the room and call for a tactile visuality that runs through our hands and plunges to take us into the depths, into the subfluvial.

Talking with Lulú is not only about thinking of images, but also about the language and how we use it to describe or talk about art. The title “Subfluvial” was chosen from a collaborative effort between curator and artist, in which we assembled and disassembled words in order to arrive at the one that summarises her current work. Sub (Depth, hollow, trace, a construction, something internal), flu (fluid, liquid, that which flows), vial (way, tunnel, course). So, in that hollow, internal and liquid depth the artist takes the circle, the oval and the triangle as small particles that build a universe. In the same way Neopythagorian theologians used to say that the cosmos lives in a geometrical harmony, what we might call fractal geometry starts forming with the purpose of accounting for the structure of existence and simultaneously for that which makes life extraordinary.

With this exhibit Lulú shows her 2024 production in which the paper shows the way it flutters, and also shows its strength and resistance. Can a paper hold strength? The answer is yes. In Lulú’s words, the paper is a “non-woven weave” where the closeness of the fibres is what creates the surface. The pattern paper is precisely, a working paper designed to stand and survive adversity. It comes together through the collage technique and assemblage, which, like with welding or stitching, provides an organic and neat union that brings the work to life.

I like to think that Lulú’s personal style is to evoke a complex universe with simple elements. In her prints the different shades of blue meet with magenta highlights that remind of the spark of movement, of internal forces, of the energy of the waters and winds. Located next to the open sky in this large subtropical garden, the pieces emerge like imaginary animals, like microscopic landscapes that draw us in as they stretch, unfold, fall, lay down, yawn…They are awake.

Violeta González Santos.