Presión y flujo

  • Luis Roldán

In Roldán’s work the accumulation of knowledge, materials or events, creates a personal taxonomy favoring the visual relation with the spectator. Far from being a self-referential narrative or a biographical sketch, Roldan’s Presión y Flujo (Pressure and Flow) provides multiple readings and experiences.

Modern mechanical ventilators—those devices that assist or replace a person’s normal breathing process—offer a graphical representation of the pressure and flow converging during respiration. The diagrams, navigating from right to left on the screen, establish a sort of cartography of the various ways in which air enters and is released by the human body; doctors are highly knowledgeable of this process, whereas the general public might deem these diagrams as abstract landscapes, or as lines in a horizon. As images that elicit free associations, the artist aims at emancipating specific terms from their fixed definition, or accurate illustration.

Although a starting point, the denotations of “flow” and “pressure” extend beyond their association with the notion of breathing. For instance, in works like “Respiraciones” (Breathing), the thread that goes in and out of the canvas brings forth analogies between inside and outside, inhaling and exhaling, pressure and flow. These associations often elicited by the qualities of the everyday materials used by the artist, set forth conceptual explorations: what resembles a stone, when examined closely, reveals itself as a discharged old children’s ball; what seem to be written lists on a page, are in fact the neighborhood grocery store’s accounting records. Roldan’s Presión y Flujo (Pressure and Flow) is therefore an invitation to experiment—in a free and multidirectional way—the diverse characteristics of our visual and material culture.