Exercises on abstraction, Series II

The work of Erlea Maneros is based on a comprehensive investigation of today’s enormous output of images. Her work analyses and reformulates the process of constructing these images, questioning their meaning. Her series takes a frame of reference linked to cultural, social, political or economic reality, appropriating visual documents related to significant subjects in this reality. Through the process of her work, they are distorted, removed from the original context by means of successive fragmentation which seems to constantly modify the image and which represents a reflective and critical break from contemporary visual consumption. The Exercises on Abstraction series (2009) demonstrates her conceptual approach to images, which here reflects on how our cultural model conditions our relationship with them. Maneros made the works in this series by putting sheets of fragile material, offset paper, into containers full of Indian ink. When they are removed, they become different monochromes, depending on the stains, marks and lines that appear by chance as they dry. Exercises on Abstraction is related to the painting of the American Abstract Expressionists. This appropriation is linked to its criticism of the concept of authorship. Maneros reproduces the different versions of the image mechanically, removing any trace of the artist as producer of a unique image with this process. She also establishes connections with the abstraction found in this important period in modern painting, questioning its conventional values, which demonstrate a critical analysis of concepts related to the idea of expressiveness and beauty.