CAROLINA SERRANO

Introductory speech: 

Carolina Serrano "Words don't let me hear" Solo exhibition at Brühler Kunstverein e.V. 

20.6. – 13.7. 2025 

 

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Carolina Serrano is a young Portuguese artist who found her way to Cologne and now presents her works here at the Brühler Kunstverein. Before coming here, she completed her Master's degree in Sculpture at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon, as well as a postgraduate course in the Art Board of the FCSH, NOVA University Lisbon. She has received awards, scholarships and participated in the prestigious "Artists and Culture Support Programme" of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. At this point, I would like to  warmly recommend a visit to the Gulbenkian Collection in Lisbon. There you will experience over 5,000 years of art history. 

Carolina has participated in numerous group exhibitions in Portugal and Germany and has been able to present her works in solo exhibitions, most recently at Matjö – Raum für Kunst in Cologne. Her work has already found its way into museum spaces and private collections. 

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As you can see from the invitation, "The work and artistic thought of Carolina Serrano are closely linked to the exploration of opposing concepts, antagonisms and the duality of human existence. By engaging with philosophical, theological and psychological concepts, such as the idea of good and evil, matter and spirit, tenderness and violence, freedom and enclosure, as well as by using wax as her preferred material, the artist creates her own language that reflects her constant attempt to understand what it means  to be a human being." – Perhaps it is more important than ever, especially in this day and age, to understand what it means to be a human being . 

 

If you move around the exhibition space of the Brühler Kunstverein, in which we are here , we experience contemporary sculpture. 

We find ourselves between sharp-edged, geometric, organically shaped and abstracted sculptures by the artist. On the walls, on the floor and even hanging from the ceiling, these are each presented in pairs. We find ourselves between seemingly irreconcilable structures, which at the same time show a harmony and put us in thought and to existential questions. 

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We see here in pairs of sculptures, forms made of wax, which sometimes seem bizarre, partly otherworldly and yet seem strangely familiar. Forms that are reminiscent of figurative remembrance and, as it were, have been abstracted in such a way that they can hardly be named. 

This may even be due to the phenomenon of opposites that the artist chooses as the subject of her work. Opposites of life and of life. Although these can be aggressive-looking shapes with protruding spikes , the gentle material is wisely chosen: Carolina Serrano works in wax – she uses artificial wax. Black dyed and white untreated paraffin form the surfaces of the works shown here. 

The material comes close to the temperature and texture of human skin, and because of the theoretical and conceptual possibilities that this material can bring forth in the viewer's imagination, the bridge to our own touch can quickly be built. Touching is what makes us who we are. Being able to feel, being able to touch, that is one of our important and vital senses . What we perceive with the senses, our nerves transmit as impulses and so we can understand. Thus, the choice of material makes perfect sense, because through the perception of these sculptural works, the artist reveals to us the way to ourselves, stimulates our senses and our understanding of humanity in all its opposites. The epidermis is essential for protecting the body from external aggressions. It consists of different layers, each with different functions – a barrier between the body and the outside world. 

So much for the material, the message made of wax is clear: it's about the human, about humanity. To find exactly these in black and white, emptiness and abundance, round and square, male and female, in life – that is the challenge to which we ourselves are called. It is essential to move between these pairs of opposites, to take our own position on them and to explore them every day in life. 

Carolina Serrano's wax sculptures seem abstract at first, but reveal human forms. In this exhibition, Serrano explores the idea further by juxtaposing sculptures with opposing attributes (male/female, inside/outside, full/empty, horizontal/vertical, lying/hanging). Thus, these opposites are either canceled out or added together by their proximity, which in turn leads to a return to unity and wholeness. 

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When we were allowed to visit Carolina in her studio, she asked and answered herself: 

"If there is black and white - what is inbetween? There must be life. So, life is color." This is how her colourful works were created, which, unlike the expansive sculptures, she now puts on paper. The use of color in her drawings is another attempt to return to this unity, because color is exactly what lies between black and white: all colors mixed together, or the absence of light/the absence of color, or the concentration of all colors of the visible light spectrum. In the exhibition "Words don't let me hear", the idea of space between two opposites is exactly what Carolina as an artist works out through sculpture and drawing. 

She paints with high-quality wax pencils, which she melts. With the hair dryer, she gets the colors to find each other, to act with each other, to dance and to freeze immediately when the heat is removed, to settle and remain together. On smaller formats and these two large formats, she has succeeded in translating sculptural work into work on paper. In this way, Carolina Serrano proves her own artistic path from black and white, to color, from good and evil, from love and hate, from all the opposites of life. She dared to ask what might be in between and answered: life. 

 

 

Written by: Pia Lukas-Larsen 

Further information about info@pialukaslarsen.com

Read on 20.6.2025 by: Robin Lukas-Larsen