Altar, Beautifying Understanding.

Introductory text for exhibition at Ashburton Art Gallery, April 2024.

Human forms divide and multiply into a kaleidoscope of six magenta tones. This colour holds much significance to Timaru-based artist Ynes Guevara as her late father ran a magazine which used it as its colour scheme. Magenta carries a forcefulness within her subconscious owing to its presence throughout her formative years.

Guevara looks to feminine archetypes to explore the magical and imaginary, and as the title suggests, to beautify understanding – attempting to minimise rational thinking and enjoying the universal beauty of qualities like simplicity, pattern, and rhythm. Her reconstructed silhouettes produce new imagery, considering the duality of the divine and erotic. 

Her work has a strong engagement with art history and literature. La Maja references the naked sitter of a Francisco Goya painting described as "the first totally profane life-size female nude in Western art". A love of poetry is evident in the paintings’ titles, with influences from seventeenth century Mexican philosopher and poet Juana Ines de la Cruz to Mexican poet, essayist and Nobel Prize laureate for Literature, Octavio Paz. This is a suite of paintings that is rich in symbolism, and explores the beauty of pure colour and form.