Alejandra
Pombo Su

Parallel to dominant canons concerning being and identity, Spinoza argued that the body consists of relations of motion and rest, slowness and speed between particles. It is therefore processes, rather than form and function, that define what different bodies are. Bodies, things, even images might look like something, but that is not what they are. The argument proposes that meaning or signification operates as a form of protection against the volatility of those endless processes, and that interpretation—however informed or concerned—brings motion and rest, slowness and speed to a halt.

The Galician artist Alejandra Pombo Su cracks open tensions between the temptations to interpret, thus consolidating form and function, and how an artwork activates processes that, as opposed to information, emphasize becoming. It is, however, important to recall that becoming is something altogether different than probabilistic and determinable processes of transformation, and instead generates signification contingent on the artist, the artwork, and the viewer. Thus, although Alejandra Pombo Su’s works are figurative, independent of expression, often symbolically hyper-charged, and certain elements frequently reappear, they are not signifiers but rather harbingers, portals to engagements with frictions between particles in motion and rest, slowness and speed.

Having a quite diverse background that moves between performance, poetry, video, sculpture, and drawing, including a PhD in artistic research, Pombo Su appears to use different formats as resistances that prevent her from settling. Inviting prominent formats seems to function as a strategy to remain vibrant, above all in combination with technologies of repetition, seriality, and abundant production. The excessive multiplication, in particular with sculptures and drawings, further strengthens the tension between what something looks like and what processes a sculpture or drawing opens up for. The sheer volume of drawings makes it somewhat impossible to consider a drawing as a proposition vis-à-vis an intention, indicating that drawings should be viewed as starting points or scenarios for the viewer’s own stories. Still, although Pombo Su repeatedly and intricately uses strategies to elude identification, there are clear signatures to her different works, however difficult to name or identify, which present themselves through affective dynamics. Affective in the sense that the works, independently of expression, expand the viewer’s ability to act upon the world, not through forms of empowerment but on his, her, or their own terms—terms they might not even be aware of.

In a typically Pombo Su manner, her voice-based solo performances elaborate foundational and simultaneously disjunctive relations to her drawing and sculpture practices. Without illustrating or complementing each other, the different media operate as cornerstones in a shared ecosystem, into which the spectator/viewer becomes assimilated. It is within this vibrant milieu—both as an environment and a medium—that Alejandra Pombo Su’s artworks transform into concepts, rather than images or spectacles: soft machines that generate indeterminacy while simultaneously remaining indeterminate in themselves.

Perhaps it is the centrality of affect that makes Alejandra Pombo Su’s work simultaneously familiar and deeply singular; contemporary and seemingly in touch with something ancient; strongly political but inviting endlessly different associations; direct and without filters; yet still enigmatic in ways that allow the viewer to forget habitual modes of thought, reflection, and appreciation.

Text: Mårten Spångberg