• Patricia Domínguez

    Watercolours, from the Electric Saga series

     

    In her solo exhibition at Cecilia Brunson Projects, Three Moons Below, Patricia Domínguez presents a new body of work incorporating painting, sculpture and film installation. Three years in the making, the exhibition is the outcome of her Simetría Residency, which gave her access to the quantum physics experiments at CERN as well as the ESO astronomical facilities in Chile. This rare access to each of these spaces enabled Domínguez to produce her most ambitious project so far: an urgent yet playful invocation for a more harmonious relationship between technology and nature.
     
    The Electric Saga is a series of meticulously detailed watercolours, painstakingly produced over several months following the residency. Domínguez’s highly technical style is informed by her training in botanical illustration, and the works are punctuated with precious and semi-precious stones, amplifying the celestial and luminescent quality of the watercolours. Domínguez reminds us that the machinery at CERN, commonplace devices such as our phones, and even seemingly immaterial technologies including artificial intelligence rely on quartzes and mined metals, and seeks to reconnect her otherworldly imagery with the earth.
     
    The Electric Saga watercolours stand as independent works, but are presented at Cecilia Brunson Projects as part of a shrine-like installation, marrying Domínguez's painting and video practices. The complete series, as well as the installation, will travel to Centro Botín, Santander this November, for the exhibition Intinerarios XXIX.
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  • Me trago el reloj sideral [I swallow the sidereal clock], 2024 watercolour and gemstones on paper. Framed: 64.5 x 52.5...
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    Me trago el reloj sideral [I swallow the sidereal clock], 2024 watercolour and gemstones on paper. Framed: 64.5 x 52.5 cm (25 3/8 x 20 5/8 in)
     
    Domínguez received a souvenir from each of the sites she visited during her Simetría Residency: CERN, the ALMA Observatory and the La Silla Observatory. One of these souvenirs was a component from a sidereal clock. The three telescopes at La Silla are coordinated using sidereal time, a highly accurate system of timekeeping based on the earth’s rotation in relation to the fixed stars.
     
    This small token from her time at the observatory became the material starting point to a sequence of increasingly fantastical and incorporeal images, Domínguez’s Electric Saga. Through these watercolour paintings, she describes unattainable desires, previously unimaginable, unlocked in her by the theoretical teachings of astronomers and quantum physicists at these facilities. She left the residency with an expanded understanding of our infinite connections across our universe, an awareness of the extreme limits of our perception, and a yearning to feel and decipher these connections.
     
    In Me trago el reloj sideral [I swallow the sidereal clock], Domínguez imagines a device that could expand our cosmological sensors. In the same way that the telescopes allowed her to see celestial bodies beyond our galaxy in real time, she imagined how she could ingest this technology and synchronise with these bodies, feel their rhythms and movements and register the light and radio waves they send our way.
     
    Gemstones: Green Onyx; Rose Quartz; Peridot; Aquamarine; Topaz
  • Entidad alineadora de nudos cósmicos [Cosmic knot aligning entity], 2024, watercolour and gemstones on paper. Framed: 77.8 x 55.5 cm...
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    Entidad alineadora de nudos cósmicos [Cosmic knot aligning entity], 2024, watercolour and gemstones on paper. Framed: 77.8 x 55.5 cm (30 5/8 x 21 7/8 in)

     
    From the webs of electrical cables connecting the observatories’ multiple telescopes, Domínguez conjures a spiritual being: a chimera that could untangle our cosmic knots – from problems and questions of universal scale, to individual feelings of discord that we cannot account for.
     
    The Cosmic Knot-Aligning Entity references a Catholic devotion popular in Latin America: Mary, Undoer of Knots, a guide to worshippers in times of confusion and nervous tension.
     
    For the exhibition Three Moons Below at Cecilia Brunson Projects, the Electric Saga watercolours are conceived as a series inset in a shrine-like, golden structure, simultaneously abstracting the architecture of CERN’s Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment and the altarpieces of baroque churches. Domínguez refrains from a popular distinction between science and spirituality, asking us to put faith in what we cannot see and expand our vocabulary around the invisible and inconceivable.
     
    Gemstones: Citrine; Moonstone; White Quartz; Ruby; Amethyst; Pink Quartz; Apache Gold
  • Evento Dorado: Cuando te traspasa un neutrino solar [Golden Event: When you get hit by a solar neutrino], 2024, watercolour...
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    Evento Dorado: Cuando te traspasa un neutrino solar [Golden Event: When you get hit by a solar neutrino], 2024, watercolour and gemstones on paper. Framed: 81.5 x 62 cm (32 1/8 x 24 3/8 in)
     
    This painting refers to one of the experiments Domínguez encountered at CERN: the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment. Two golden chambers filled with liquid argon are positioned across the earth from each other, seeking to register neutrinos, a type of particle that passes straight through the planet’s core, and, on occasion, through our bodies - termed a ‘golden event’ - without us knowing.
     
    Domínguez imagines being sensitive enough to detect this moment and interpret this information. 'Evento Dorado: Cuando te traspasa un neutrino solar [Golden Event: When you get hit by a solar neutrino]' crystallises her desire for a feeling of unity with the universe. She imagines a sense of euphoria in crossing paths with another being, energy or force and receiving its messages.
     
    The painting is enhanced by a shower of citrine gemstones. As they catch the light, they evoke the golden chamber at CERN, a notion that conjures images of a legendary or heavenly place. The scattered stones float between the figure and a celestial orb looming in the corner, as if tethering the two together by invisible forces.
     
    Gemstones: Citrine
  • Busco a mi partícula entrelazada. No sé si esta en Andrómeda o en una rueda de auto [I’m looking for...
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    Busco a mi partícula entrelazada. No sé si esta en Andrómeda o en una rueda de auto [I’m looking for my entangled particle. I don't know if it's in Andromeda or in a car wheel?], 2024, watercolour and gemstones on paper. Framed: 62.2 x 62.2 cm (24 1/2 x 24 1/2 in)
     

    The concept that most captivated Domínguez during her time at CERN was the theory of quantum entanglement. The theory states that our particles are spread throughout the universe, separated by vast distances but still connected with us. Our particles could be in another animal, in the inanimate objects that surround is, or in another galaxy altogether, but it is not known where they receive the energy to make these leaps.

     

    Domínguez became transfixed by this idea, which conjures images of intricately tangled threads webbed across the cosmos, binding us to foreign objects. She dreams of a device that could call out to all her entangled particles in the solar system and make these interconnections visible.

     

    Gemstones: Citrine; Green Onyx; Aquamarine; Apache Gold; Moonstone; London Blue Topaz.

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  • Háblale geométricamente a la Tierra [Talk geometrically to the Earth], 2024, watercolour and gemstones on paper. Framed: 81.2 x 62.2...
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    Háblale geométricamente a la Tierra [Talk geometrically to the Earth], 2024, watercolour and gemstones on paper. Framed: 81.2 x 62.2 cm (32 x 24 1/2 in)

     
    Visiting the observatories in the Atacama Desert, Domínguez learned that we are constantly receiving information, for example in the form of radio waves, from planets, exoplanets, black holes and other celestial bodies. At the same time, we are emitting information ourselves.
     
    She imagined our planet speaking to us in an audible, invisible language, and dreamed of organic technologies that would give us the power to communicate – to become conscious of the frequencies we are emitting, and to speak the language of the earth.
     
    Through her research for this series of watercolours, Domínguez also read her grandfather’s extensive studies of Cueca, the national dance of Chile, and spoke to a Cueca singer. He described the rhythms of the music as being tied to the mathematic patterns and orbital rhythms of the first four planets and first three moons in our solar system. This conversation provided her with the terms to visualise the abstract ideas introduced to her during the Simetría residency, as she imagines feeling these rhythms and synchronising her body with these movements to recalibrate to the earth’s frequencies. A ‘Quantum Cueca’ was composed for this project, performed at the end of the film Tres Lunas más Abajo [Three Moons Below].
     
    Domínguez’s watercolours are produced over a series of weeks or months, with this painting requiring hundreds layers of paint to achieve the depth of the astral skies, to contrast the ethereal lightness and energy at the centre of the work.
     
    Gemstones: Green Onyx; Opal; Topaz; Labradorite; Aquamarine; Garnet; Ruby; Bumblebee Jasper; Crystal Quartz.
     
  • Acaricio a mis tres lunas interiores [I caress my three inner moons], 2024, watercolour and gemstones on paper. Framed: 62.2...
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    Acaricio a mis tres lunas interiores [I caress my three inner moons], 2024, watercolour and gemstones on paper. Framed: 62.2 x 62.2 cm (24 1/2 x 24 1/2 in)
     
    The Electric Saga series of watercolours began with physical components from the machines Domínguez encountered at CERN and the ESO astronomical facilities in Chile that she visited on her Simetría residency. As the series progressed, the paintings became increasingly fantastical and otherworldly, no longer depicting what she had seen, but articulating the ways these machines expanded her thought processes.
     
    Seeing the sidereal clocks of the ESO telescopes in the Atacama Desert, as well as speaking to astronomers, traditional Cueca singers and indigenous healers in the nearby towns, Domínguez began to consider different ways of measuring time, and dreamed of detaching herself from human rhythms and measuring systems to instead connect with other bodies, such as the moons in our solar system.
     
    This painting takes inspiration from both moon charts and calendars and from science fiction – particularly in the figure’s outfit, in a style Domínguez playfully describes as ‘spiritual fiction.’
     
    Gemstones: Apatite; Garnet; Opal; Apache Gold; White Quartz; Topaz; Citrine; Rose Quartz; Amethyst; Marcasite; Carnelian; Moonstone; Labradorite
  • The metal door found me, and I entered, 2024, watercolour assemblage, recycled acrylic. 171 x 118 cm (67 3/8 x...
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    The metal door found me, and I entered, 2024, watercolour assemblage, recycled acrylic. 171 x 118 cm (67 3/8 x 46 1/2 in)
     

    The metal door found me, and I entered is Domínguez’s first watercolour produced in the more painterly style usually reserved for her personal notes and diaries. While her paintings are typically the result of meticulous planning and a very slow, rational process, she describes this work as being more intuitive.

     

    Domínguez considers the assemblage as a map of a non-ordinary reality. She describes passing through the metal doors of CERN and taking elevators to new depths as like entering portals, each one taking her to unfamiliar environments comprised of vast machines, often manifesting as temple-like spaces, such as the golden chamber of the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment. In the presence of machines of such magnitude and power, she says ‘it’s impossible not to feel it in your body,’ and began to imagine herself being consumed by the machines, acquiring their capabilities.

     

    At the same time, her conception of her own position in the universe, the permanence of her being and the permeability of her body and was challenged, as she learnt about the theories being tested and experiments being conducted throughout the facility. The theory of quantum entanglement – of our particles travelling across the universe and entangling themselves with other objects and life forms – made the greatest impression on the artists during her time at CERN. The fragmentation and reorganisation of images in this assemblage reflects the profound influence the Simetría residency had on Domínguez’s perception of our bodies and our technologies.