CECILIA JIMÉNEZ OJEDA: "INTERIØRDETALJER"
CECILIA JIMÉNEZ OJEDA
"INTERIØRDETALJER"
23.08.-21.09.2024 / PREVIEW: FRIDAY 23.08.2024 / 19.00 - 21.00
-----
STANDARD (OSLO) is pleased to present "Interiørdetaljer", Cecilia Jiménez Ojeda's first solo exhibition with the gallery. The exhibition consists of seven graphite drawings based on photos from a family member's apartment. None are larger than A4. To Jiménez the motifs present intentionally unremarkable: a speck of dirt on a window sill, a glass of worn toothbrushes and combs, a bathing cap hanging on a bathroom wall. In other lines of work, barring the field of housekeeping or renovation perhaps, a description of these lives sitting still would be arbitrary. In ours, their precious size and number so tenderly rendered are begging to be filled in with autobiographical background or compelling narrative that we expect is coming. If you are looking for something sinister, or something humorous then that is what you will find.
Or is it there at all? A read could be sheer boredom. The chosen tableaus have no apparent urgency, or agency. Zooming in on meaningless details in an environment, these works are not striving to elevate the beauty of simple items or bring any sense of appreciation to the objects themselves. They are more like reading the back of a shampoo bottle while on the toilet. The inadvertent view into non-affluent living conditions hardly seems mentionable, note of commonplace more than anything. Jimenez brings a tone of ambivalence and apathy to these surroundings.
Purposefully working from photography, Jimenez preserves a distinct character of poor quality snapshots. Out of focus accidents with weird angles and spatially disorienting croppings. These careless compositions testify to the cheapness and the disposable side of photography. A stark contrast to the painstaking work of reproducing them as drawings. Jimenez describes her technique as self-effacing and the works as “mere containers for effort”. Drawing this way requires discipline, manual effort, copious amounts of time. It is exactly with this technically impressive labour, the near scanner quality works, which leaves a distance to the subject. An impersonal relationship, an empty deadness. With so much effort put into the making but so muted in content we are left to investigate a step further and ask where this mode of working comes from. This brings us back to the intentionality of apathy. Severe depression, trauma, or stress? The overall psychological state comes into question. But this time she does not wish to give us more.
-----
Cecilia Jiménez Ojeda born 1982, Borås, Sweden; lives and works in Oslo, Norway. This is her first solo exhibition at STANDARD (OSLO) after inclusion in a group exhibition “Myth of the Cherry Tree”, organized by Mary Grace Wright. Recent exhibitions include Destiny's, Kunstnernes Hus, Kunstnerforbundet, and Tegneforbundet in Oslo.
-----
