Clara Montoya

Clara Montoya - You amazonite

Artist Biography: Clara Montoya is an artist from Madrid who has stood out for her multidisciplinary work characterized by a minimalist and conceptual aesthetic. Her training is international, having studied at the Royal College of Art in London, at Cité Internationnale des Arts in Paris, at The Cooper Union in New York and finally at Chelsea College Art in London.Her work moves in a variety of media, such as painting, sculpture, photography and video, always with a strong presence of geometry and the use of simple forms and clean lines.Montoya has been influenced by minimalist art and her work focuses on the search for essence and simplicity, trying to convey the feeling that everything that is unnecessary has been eliminated. In his works, one can see elements that at first glance may appear to be simple geometric shapes, but upon closer inspection, they acquire a deeper meaning.In addition, his work is also reflective and often has a social and political undertone, dealing with issues such as identity, exclusion and gender.In terms of his creative process, Montoya usually works in series, exploring a particular theme or idea in depth. She often uses industrial materials and modern technology in her work, although she has also worked with traditional techniques such as Print. Clara Montoya's work has been exhibited in various galleries and museums, both in Spain and abroad, and she has received several awards and recognitions for her work. With her refined and conceptual style, Montoya is an artist who never ceases to surprise and captivate her audience with her ability to convey great ideas through simple forms.

 

YOUR In the restoration workshops of the Vatican Museums a large group of people work on works hundreds of years old. Clara Montoya has been visiting those spaces and getting a close look at the ways of doing and thinking of the restoration team. Among many other pieces they have in their collection a god called TÚ, from the archipelago of the Gambier Islands and sculpted in the eighteenth century in wood with four legs and no arms (torn off). The pieces that go through this process, such as TÚ, which gives its name to this series of sculptures, become elements of communication between the artists of the past and the professionals of the present. In them, the restorers read the signs and gestures of the authors of another era; in some cases, they even manage to locate the handprints of the original authors on the surface of the ancient sculptures. A link is thus established between art workers from different periods. Clara Montoya has looked at these processes and at how materials deteriorate and are restored and how deteriorate and are restored and how communities of people are generated around these mechanisms to create a set of sculptures in which half-destroyed materials are combined with half-destroyed materials. materials that are half-destroyed or half-restored are combined. A limbo in which the time of the sculpture remains undefined, in which the surfaces do not allow us to understand whether they have lost their forms or are still waiting to be carved.