'De uma série de pepinos' by Estela Sokol

In 1979, Estela Sokol is born, an artist from São Paulo.

She still lives and works in São Paulo, where she creates remarkable art and explores different materials, such as concrete, plastic, fabrics, resins, beeswax, wood, brass, photoluminescent pigments and many others – combinations are even created between elements seen as antagonistic, such as marble and acrylic. Sokol uses light and color as pivots in his research, the variety of raw materials used seems to work around and at the service of exploring color and light in different shades and alterations, through a pictorial reasoning materialized in sculptures, objects, paintings no ink and other creations.

Using this particular approach, he continued transforming his style and participated in exhibitions in Brazil and, for example, at the Taipa Museum in China, Bycr Gallery in Milan and in England through Gallery 32 in London, both individual and collective – some require citation , such as the individual 'WXRTD-320' from 2008 exhibited in São Paulo, 'Licht Konkret', exhibited in Austria in 2011, or her work installed at Largo da Batata in 2018, entitled 'Greta Garbo'.

On her website, she entitles a sequence of works made in 2021 as 'cucumbers', or else 'from a series of cucumbers (sad & brazilian)', made up of several felt paintings forming a mixture of set and unity – “I cannot say that they do not exist alone, but that they exist better together”, is what the artist says to the Casa de Cultura do Parque, also home of the exhibition.

A work initiated from the invitation made by Claudio Cretti, the artist had at her disposal a wall measuring 280 x 1020 cm, the measure that gives the project its name. In the presentation video, Sokol affirms a change in his creative process during the period of social isolation, the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic and the moment in which the series was developed. This context modified factors such as time and space, thus transforming her creations – the artist declares: “because I was working at home, I created two-dimensional works, […], works that are a series”, as in ‘cucumbers’.

The series indicates the continuation of experiments with industrial colors and materials. Sokol made paintless paintings in two-dimensional frames with the use of overlapping felt fabrics, produced with the colors of the industrial palette, explored by the artist who collected different available colors. She used several possibilities of composition and chromatic harmony, playing with the figures and the background – gaining power and impact with the way it is presented on her website: photos of the individual pieces displayed in sequence, with quick intervals and vibrant colors.

Another curious point resides in its title, because in addition to the direct reference to the meme “sad & brazilian”, the work also points out the popular and figurative meaning of “cucumber”: a situation presented as a problem or complication – this is because the vegetable is difficult to digest, therefore, a good metaphor for difficult situations to pass. Celso Ferrarezi Junior, professor and post-doctorate in semantics, says to Revista Abril: “An analogy is given by the intersection of elements in different cultural fields. ‘Problem’ is a generic word. So we look for examples to illustrate it”.

Sokol claims to have created before naming, signaling particular processes of his work, even so, this title given a posteriori opens even more doors for interpretation. Analogies are ways of illustrating meanings, through the use of different elements. It is what happens at the moment of naming and, perhaps unconsciously, in what precedes it – that is, the crossing of differences arising from the boldness of mixing materials and colors, painting without painting, in the choice of the signifier that names and brings with pre-established meanings. In addition, 'cucumber' denounces a problem, here literally illustrated by images, created in the midst of a problematic, pandemic, uncertain, cloistered context.

The attempt to illustrate problems comes across a characteristic of art – if we think of it in a Lacanian line –, as it presents itself as an attempt to give destination to the unrepresentable, for example the discomfort effect of our interaction with the world. Through art, the artist can elaborate what is unpleasant to the Self, because, as Lacan says, art is a form of organization around the void – in the face of implacable data such as the pandemic, creation traces a narrow and perhaps strange path of articulations and meanings, sometimes guiding our existence in times of so many ''cucumbers''.

In summary, the series has a certain amount of humor and a lot of personality. It evokes the double meaning in the title and intrigues with its way of materialization, it makes me think how problems, or rather, how 'cucumbers' can be crossed with the use of creativity, whether solving them or simply creating from them.

And what have you already created with your ‘cucumbers’?