Composition 17 (Kiko Series)

“My goal is to find the answers to the essential questions that human beings have asked themselves throughout history,” Arrázola recently remarked. “Why are we here? What are we doing here? What are we?” A young artist and graduate of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, he plumbs the myriad possibilities of paper in his work, combining extraordinary draftsmanship with tears and punctures that transform the two-dimensional surface into three-dimensional space. For Arrázola, paperworking is worldmaking, and his recent Kiko Series foregrounds the nature of creation through the actions—playful and serendipitous, innocent and existential—of children. “This figure is a reflection of the observer,” Arrázola allows, and not least of himself. “My world is the world of my figures,” he acknowledges. “I am part of this world” (“Latin Art: Art Gallery Interview with Colombian Artist Pablo Arrázola,” Beatriz Esguerra Arte, 2020).
“In this artwork,” Arrázola explains of the Kiko Series, “the girl is clearly transforming her reality, her space, the same way we do with our world. In my reality, I transform my space, I adapt it so that it suits me. This girl is doing exactly the same thing.” In Composition 16, a young girl blows dust into the air as if making a wish, her eyes tightly closed in concentration. We find the protagonist of Composition 17 in a different kind of reverie, perched on a slender fragment of paper that coils gently around her, enfolding her into the void—or the infinity—of its cut-open space. “All human beings are the owners and creators of their destiny,” Arrázola reflects. “The work becomes a mirror of what is happening to us. In a certain way, the paper is this figure’s reality. The white-on-white background is, to a degree, infinite” (ibid.).
Abby McEwen, Assistant Professor, University of Maryland, College Park