Teresa Tomás

Valencia 1964

Lives and works in Valencia

Linked to the Galería My Name’s Lolita Art. Participated in the Pieza a pieza (Piece to piece) and Aire de familia. Una aproximación a la Figuración Postconceptual (Air of family. An approach to the Post-conceptual Figuration) exhibitions.

Teresa Tomás integrates the paint on the procedural development of her work. Together with sculpture or virtual animation, the pictorial representation acquires a metaphorical role referring to both the creative process and the subject in which they are integrated. Her artistic production is structured in series where the poetic logic and theoretical reflection are articulated in complex conceptual games producing images of great formal complexity.

In her paintings, Tomás challenges the concept of realism in order to represent ideas or mental images through a new poetic scientific objectivity. Her pictorial images are digitally designed using vector methods that provide a geometric definition which manages to make unbelievable.

Tomás releases her sculpture from its base in paint starting the development in her film work. The realization of animations produced by modeling programs, 3D animation and rendering has influenced her conception of painting as the assembly for the film frame. Her digital sculptures are constructed by geometric meshes, applying assembly and collage techniques in the tradition of Duchamp’s found object. The use of virtual reality gives full control of the physical simulation of matter, which is manipulated with poetic purposes.

The structure of her series is based on the creation of characters that encourages throughout the structured narratives transformers in cycles based on the metaphorical use of natural phenomena such as reflection, mutation, decay, refraction or processing. Another resource commonly used in the construction of the story is the game of contrasts between concepts and contrary ideas. Among the elements in her own iconography include visual elements of representation, physical phenomena or mathematical concepts. Also noteworthy is the review made with characters and archetypes of traditional stories and classical myths.

The series where paint has a greater role are Game of birds –composed of Pión entra en el juego (Pión starts to play) and Espantapájaros (Scarecrow)– where she dialogues with sculpture in a complex combinatorial game. The first meeting between the animation and the pictorial medium occurs in La Casa por el tejado (The House through the roof). The sculpture disappears and reappears in the painting series Destejer el arco iris (Unweaving the rainbow). In the suite Son (Being Sound) the sculpture becomes physical through the pictorial representation of virtual materials.

Among the pictorial references the following painters are highlighted: El Bosco, Oskar Schlemmer, Rene Magritte, Salvador Dali, Kasimir Malevich, Georgia O’keffe, Maruja Mallo o James Rosenquist.

Consulted bibliography: Gutiérrez, Menchu “La fantasía de la bombilla y otros cuentos en imágenes de Teresa Tomás”, Barberá, Adolfo, “El ojo extruido”, in the exhibition catalogue Teresa Tomás. Destejer el arco iris, Universitat de València, Valencia, 2007.