Games
Games are a small group of works with its own personality in the context of Pilar Lara’s production in this phase: they are inspired by conventional, traditional games, such as domino, chess and jigsaw puzzles. It is not hard to imagine that the models were not chosen by accident: on the one hand, as it is common in the artist’s plastic language from that moment on, it is important that the ‘mechanism’ of the work of art is easily recognized so that someone watching has no difficulty deciphering it and quickly gets to decode the message, thus ensuring an immediate impact; on the other hand, these games open up some basic allegorical possibilities, as an expression of mathematical and therefore, mental combinations.
Apart from that, these works perfectly fit into the context of this period’s production: the first jigsaw puzzles based on cubes- ‘El animal humano’ [The human animal] and ‘Intercambio’ [Exchange]-, presented, as usual, in cardboard boxes, from the set of boxes of the early nineties at the Capilla del Oidor; and the board games, from the montages produced around 1995 for the Círculo de Bellas Artes exhibition. The latter ones touch two of the topics that are amongst the concerns of this phase: gender relations- ‘Juego de damas’ [Draughts], ‘Metamorfosis nº 1’ and ‘Metamorfosis nº 2’-, the violence of war- the chess set in ‘Reciclaje para la paz nº 1’ and the dominoes in ‘Reciclaje para la paz nº 2’, both done with artillery shell casings and linked to the Christmas tree entitled ‘Reciclaje para la paz nº 3’-. In these artworks, Pilar merely captures, by means of more evident resources, what she had already addressed in many of her boxes: the works are not static, they contain an invitation to interact with them, to complete them through handling, to make us think through action…This could certainly be considered a materialization of the driving force behind all her creative activity: taking action and not standing on the sidelines, being able to express her opinion about the things she disliked, and perhaps making others reflect on them too.
