POETIC
ICONOGRAPHY
OF
GIOCONDA
ROJAS
by Juan Acha
"…In truth, Gioconda Rojas offers us a set of images, stains and familiar words which do not obey the desire to narrate a fact but rather aim to give visibility to lyric worlds with an unequaled aesthetic intensity. To this end, she cleverly limits herself to accentuating the narrative capacity of each figure, stain and word in its own isolation, which in itself hinders narration. Her seldom encountered aesthetic intensity, which emanates lyricism, is the result of a deft creation of atmosphere achieved with subtle, harmonious and suggestive colours.
In addition, it is accompanied by the admirable manual mastery through which the author unfolds her half-graphic, half-pictorial style. Hers is an iconography that renders poetic her elliptical themes, her rich aesthetic weight and her attractive graphic-pictorial style.
Every part of Gioconda Rojas’ works is directed at our sensibility, whether this latter be impelled to improvise an aesthetic code or to dust off one of those in the attic of our collective memory. It is then that the possible meanings of each figure, stain and word are united through the reactions provoked by how each image is drawn and painted, and how the figures and colours have been strategically placed in the overall pictorial surface.
Each work is presented to us as a revitalizing rush of fresh water in the sought after plurality of Latin American painting. In this field, a place of honour should be given to Gioconda Rojas’ works, whose aesthetic wealth promises an increasing continuity and variety of future pictorial achievements."
Juan Acha
Mexico DF, May 1993.
PERMANENCE
IN
CHANGE
By Efraím Hernández
"…The transparent luminosity of her surfaces, achieved through velature and layer-work, is an important part of her aesthetic vocabulary and confers a suggestive and ambiguous spatiality to her paintings. Over these luminous spaces wander figures, characters, objects, thoughts; emotions and phrases that the author allows to escape and, like an echo, feelings and ideas resound on the surface of the canvas.
All the figures that populate these abstract spaces come and go; sometimes walking, others running, floating in orbits of return and departure that are an important metaphor for life’s change and constant transformation. This is the central concept of Gioconda Rojas’ paintings.
As encounters or non-encounters, the images appear or escape from the cloth, constructing the great metaphor of the eternal flow of things, of the constant transformation of life’s experiences, of the uninterrupted passing of existence, a key concept in Gioconda’s painting.
Float, run, wait, walk. Rock in infancy’s hammock, follow the tracks towards the future, let oneself go, put up resistance. Shout or "keep silence" in a transparent jar to appreciate its aroma alone.
Stay or travel, anything is possible immersed in the lyricism of Gioconda Rojas’ canvases."
Efraím Hernández Villalobos
San José, May 1999.