Many of Pilar Cossio’s works are characterised by the going beyond the limits of the picture . This is what occurs in her –“Transhumances 1 and 2” where the rhinoceroses escape from the fabric where it seems they were born inorder to later invade the wall on which they have been hung.
An apparently uncontainable force seems to be at the origin of this obstacle at the frontiers of the painting. Even so, it must be mentioned that , in this case , the work frees itself from its frame , flounting the edges, in other words, it is rather in the sense of fleeing through its thickness where the escape is made. More than a liberation of out of bounds , it is really about a game of transparency.
The layers of the image are stratified without eliminating one other and thus digging a kind of abyss where the paint appears to engulf everything, making it even more diaphanous and light.
This method is evidently not without any bearing on the collage art which Pilar Cossio has used, very subtly and widely, since the beginning of her works.
For those who follow , not only the manegement of the expanding shapes , but also the theme of her images they will scarcely be surprised that Pilar Cossio’s art uses multiple fleeing figures in this way.
Recurring symbols in such constant movement makes it seem as if this were the metaphysical condition of the Human Being trains,ships,maps,city profiles, that never stop passing from one collage to another, from one painting to another. Nothing is stable. No Still Life. No stagnation. In Pilar Cossio’s art everything moves relentlessly as if this continuous movement only could give her origin and life.
_”Incantesimo”_ we see a poster of a navigation from Trieste that opens up through imaginary ports of Asia, Africa,and of Australia to the little red chaperon which the artist has smuggled in.
In another work “Desert Song” we find a photograph of Sainte Thérèse of Bernin, stuck between two locomotives on the train tickets from Rome to Turin, which just finds a new meaning to her ecstasy. The rapture of the voyage.
Yet still we cannot help observing , in the heart of this kaleidoscope the shapes and images in constant expansion, the repetition of musical images, especially improvised ones. A saxophone player glues and redoubles himself on yet another train ticket. From the pavilion(?) of a trumpet a transatlantic liner appears. A cello divides the picture vertically by its strings…
Music is also movement , another way of somehow suggesting a radical escape: this time it’s no longer about breaking through the picture frame, but about the frame of vision.
Perhaps this is why for some time feet and shoes –it is true, already well used by those who only dream of travelling…….invade Pilar Cossio’s works. Haunted by the music, isn’t her art simply set in motion staying put? What one might also call “dancing”
Daniel Soutif.
Paris. february 2002