Karen 3 Beverly
Catalog - Karen Clachart - Presentation
The Museo Nacional de Costa Rica (National Museum of Costa Rica) has invited Karen Clachar to exhibit her most recent work for several reasons. First, the MNCR is interested in profound and rigorous proposals created by contemporary artists based on cultural heritage. In the case of Karen Clachar, heritage has been a theme revisited by the artist through photography, video, installation, graphics and painting. Further, Karen's recent work manifests a conceptual maturity that justifies a setting such as the oldest and most emblematic anthropological museum in the country.
10 years ago, in Karen’s prior exhibition at the MNCR, (Karen is not lavish, she is unhurried, she chooses to walk slowly because her curiosity is deliberately measured), the artist focused on manifestations of the deep and symbolic culture of Guanacaste, her land native. In that exhibition, Karen mediated the reflection between the support of the chosen cultural object (a bridge, a century-old house, a Guanacaste tree, a sabanero handkerchief) and a multimedia visual discourse which gave meaning to the sociological experience. The participatory communication of the attendants was one of the artist’s priorities, and formal execution was her legitimating artistic factor.
In 2018, the signs of petro-prints are the starting point of a reflection, individual as it is collective, retrospective as well as contemporary. On this occasion, the artist coexists with the communicator and the publicist in a continuous commitment to the reflection of the work itself (the act of creating through various means) and time. The glyph is just a starting point, a graphic reference to reveal how consumer society prints its mark through universal brands and signs.
Karen, like the Nigüenta, digs and finds. The viewer is torn between astonishment and liberation.
Rocío Fernández de Ulibarri
Director of Museo Nacional de Costa Rica
San José, April 2018