still Painting

The recent work of Nicole Mouracade (1960) questions the idea of presence as sign, the memory of an event or object that was there -- at some moment and for a certain time, both indefinite -- then to disappear. What remains is not only the memory of a form or symbol, but also the mark made by an action, a gesture capable of materializing an idea or desire of the artist. It's about "scraps", leftovers, transcience being their most evident character. However, it must be made clear that we are not in a presence based only on a subjective abstraction, but on a material object which left testimony of its passage. We can take it as an evidence, a proof that the "event" happened. But in what way? How did it happen and what form did it assume? Nicole seems then to point toward the following finding, once again charged with paradoxes: that these works also speak of performance, for they have a performative dimension, starting from the artist's decision to head in the direction of reality and its apparent form, and then to leave the vestiges of these actions at the disposal of the observer. Fernando Oliva, art critic and curator.