THE COLOUR IS ON THE WALL
Alfredo Cernadas

For THE HERALD, Buenos Aires, 30 de septiembre de 2007

What first strikes the viewer’s eye upon entering the gallery is a gust of colour that pours from the walls and surrounds him/her as if he/she had stepped into an enchanted forest, to the passionate strains of a Berloiz overture. Indeed, a symphony of saturated hues (scarlet, emerald green, purple, black, ochre, most notably) vibrates on the (mostly) large canvasses. The colours are contained in irregular rectangles organized in a dynamic manner that gives life to what could otherwise have been a static composition. The first shock wave overcome, the viewer is greeted by a helter skelter assemblage of objects. Some will not be surprising, for after all, they are the artist’s tools: brushes, jars, spatula, rolls, scissors. The others make one think that the infamous Imelda Marcos had taken up painting. Indeed she used to own thousands of shoes and that article is what appears in Susana Marenco’s pictures. But in them men’s footwear can also be seen, adding a subtle note of sensuality since shoes are quite a fetish for some people. And with the shoes the artist shows that, even if she is a great colorist (I dare say above all a colorist), she is also an outstanding drawer, which can also be ascertained in the only two works in which the human figure appears, though only partially. In one it is a rather unexpected female nude, a sort of modern version of the buxon nymphs Rubens and his contemporaries portrayed. In the other one you see the lower half of a pair of legs, the feet incased in shoes of course. Shoes, painter’s kit, explosive colours. Strange bed (or should I say canvas) fellows indeed. Yet they do make striking pictures.

Clasico &Moderno, Medrano 1906, Buenos Aires