Verses on slates

  "Traces of Time" By María José Gómez Redondo

This work began in 1999, and it is still ongoing.

I printed several photos and sentences on different kinds of paper and fabric, then glued them onto slates. These slates were pieces taken from a roof covering. They feature self-portraits layered over portraits of my family members.

I glued the materials in layers, one on top of another, and over time, some parts were partially erased by rubbing or simply by the passage of time. I have placed these images on fine-grained, black metamorphic rock that naturally splits into smooth, flat pieces. Both the images and their support gradually lose layers, much like the text itself. The words are stripped away, inviting the viewer to complete their meaning through the remaining fragments and overlapping phrases.

I enjoy working with photographs, seeing them not only as representations but also as tangible objects with their own physical presence. Their gradual deterioration becomes a metaphor for the passage of time, for forgetting, and for memory itself.

Visually, they remind me of Rauschenberg’s transfer drawings, in which the artist recycles fragments of American collective memory into alternative narratives, disconnected from a linear sense of history. His ethereal drawings merge scraps of printed media with hand-drawn and painted passages. Similarly, my intention is to create pictorial poems that subtly reflect the excesses of contemporary visual culture. In my case, my work documents my own self-representations over time, revealing my aging process.

Paradoxically, the slates seem to me like Paleolithic mobile screens, carrying messages that echo today’s social networks.

Slates paradoxically seem to me paleolithic mobile screens with their messages on social Networks.