Equanimity
The asymmetry of balance
Equanimity presented by Sofia Pidwell at the gallery Round The Corner, stands simultaneously as an exercise of continuity, but also as a regeneration motto in her work. She has accustomed us to the visual characteristics and the conviviality between drawing and space as well as between formal and conceptual overlapping, Pidwell discusses, in this exhibition, the possibilities of drawing as a place of asymmetrical balance, which is the reason why this asymmetry persists.
The concept of equanimity that gives the title to the exhibition refers in this case to the need that the subject has to find an endogenous balance which, through the creative act, gains exogeneity and interacts with the surroundings. In her drawings, Pidwell finds an aesthetical equivalent of this proactive emotional state by fleeing from the Manichaeism of good and bad, right and wrong in an escape from any kind of essentialism whatsoever.
There are two visual moments in this exhibition – a mural and a drawing on paper – they are presented as extensions and reflections on the space they inhabit, this same space being characterized by its peculiar architecture where symmetry does not exist. But it is exactly through this asymmetry that this place finds its balanced and balancing nature and gives shelter to the work of art upon which Pidwell’s creative act is built.
By remaining loyal to the flexible trace as her element, the artist discovers the exact proportion of this prodigiously stable drawing through concomitant acts of formal identification and suppression. If forms in nature assume themselves as regulating instances of what is or may be, perceived as detaining congenital balance, Pidwell’s drawings reinvent this asymmetrical balance and reveal a visual apology of equanimity itself.
Text by Ana Cristina Cachola, February 2013
