Without words there is nothing, there is no communication, no thought, no memory, no knowledge. There is no being. This is how Carlos Sánchez Alonso understands his sculptures, in linguistic and vital terms, as beings that communicate and have "our same characteristics, problems and evolutions". When he names his sculptures "words", he does not refer to a simple literary resource, but to a form of knowledge. The word, by affirming its radical identity and its radical non-identity, makes it want to build from it —as a mere starting point— the soul of a new object.

His work is especially related to the fact of feeling, of empathizing with this new aesthetic object. As if it were a montage of stories, they are born from an experience that consists of observing and finding, not inventing; a process of inclusion and not exclusion, of presentation and not of representation. A sculpture that gets rid of the usual structures of perception through the use of materials found, residual or that suggest previous uses and the passage of time. In this way, he claims extraordinary freedom for his creation, without restrictions of categories, means or forms. The result is these intriguing assemblages of times and origins that evoke a vague archaeological dimension and point to a reading in which there is no clear history or origin. These objects are presented to the artist as the "correct" shape to use to complete his sculptures. The very act of placing and supporting already means highlighting something, and at the same time, maintaining the independent and separable quality of the work of art. Then the game begins with the various elements, among which, those that house the writing stand out. The books, which he sometimes presents closed — like imprisoned words — and that other times he breaks or modifies, are deprived of his reading, they cease to be significant to become the architectural elements that support his visual poems.

These pieces designed for the wall have a stratified depth, the overlaps and spaces, as well as the diversity of straight and curved lines, can be appreciated above all thanks to the shadows they cast, in some cases intensified by the light they cast. they give off These lights create an immaterial, ethereal, technological and even futuristic atmosphere, in contrast to the found materials that suggest wear and tear and lived life. But the introduction of ordinary elements goes beyond a mere instrumental and communicative saying, since they also show us a language that is suitable as a subjective expression and as a vehicle for imagination and knowledge.

In the end, it is the imagination that carries out the moment of semantic innovation, the one whose mission is to outline these new synthesis. And Carlos Sánchez's task, as an artist, is to start forever again, although not all the keys are negligible. His work is a symbol and agent of a duality, of the image and the environment. A plastic filter through which he looks at the world in which he lives and, each of his "words", the discovery of a new law of the universe.

Oscar Manrique Ares.

© ON Art Space by Tila Barrena