Mele

— Mercedes Guenun

2020 was an unutterable year, a year that put us all to the test, a long distance race without winner and with so many defeated... A chimeric year that ripped off our freedom while strangely buying us some time... During the confinement I found the opportunity to surrender to the world of art, to unleash a creativity that I had not fully embraced until then... I felt the need to express myself, to turn my experiences into works that embodied the importance of LIGHT, POSITIVE ENERGY and the FREEDOM that had been taken away from us.

After 25 years as Executive Director in the fashion and luxury sectors, I decided to embark on this project that I had been nurturing for quite some time, and it was this recent period of deep concern that became the revulsive I needed to start this journey. And from my deep optimism and the desire to keep on evolving, I opened myself to the "unconfinable" universe of art, to which I have always been linked (my father used to take me to museums every weekend when I was a child).

This is how I managed to turn to my creative vocation, with a sensitivity for contemporary art and today's fascinating society in which transparency is a leading factor. All this, coupled with the personality of someone who is convinced that attention to detail is vital.

Living in Spain has turned light into a key factor in my life. I am passionate about light tones, blue skies, luminosity, the sun and its warm flashes...

During the months of confinement, I took to seating in the area of greatest natural light in my house and I began to draw... Weeks later I decided to run some tests and marvelled that I had managed to capture in a work exactly what I had been feeling.

I work with dichroic glass embedded in lacquered wood, from which my designs take on light, a light that changes its hue depending on the reflections it receives. Under these lighting conditions, the glass emits the soft and ever changing flashes of the rainbow in pastel colors.

My works spread echoes of freedom, thanks to the glaring brightness that flows through the crystals, transmitting positive energy and my desire to share with the world that there is always a way out.

The biggest challenge I have encountered so far has been precisely how to show the breadth of the visual impact of my work, as it metamorphoses and multiplies under natural light.

EXHIBITIONS

April 2021 – Espacio 2 Gallery – Obra Viva (Breathing Art) exposition

July 2021 – Contemporary Art Fair JUST MAD

May 2022 –Obra Viva II (Breathing Art II) (Mercedes Guenun’s Studio – Alcobendas, Madrid)

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