Cara a Cara at The Grady Alexis Gallery. Taller Latino
La Prensa Newspaper. New York, February 23rd, 2001

The creation of Silvia Gonzales Franco is very unusual. The frozen expressions kept for posterity bring to mind some of those megalithic statues from Isla de Pascua that show a millenary look lost in some point in the horizon.

In this marvelous work currently at the gallery Taller Latino, every sculpture has a well-defined feature that indicates gestures that often come accompanied by the mechanic telegraphy of body, in order to fulfill the message. But in this exhibition, the faces are the ones that revealed at least to facets of the human condition that are focused in two visions. One of them consists of revealing the physical features of the race that populate the planet. In the second one the pliant figures made out of plaster and wood, dance to the rhythm of the soul’s depth that some times can be translated to pain and happiness. In this work however the contemplative seriousness, astonishment and anguish are predominant.

Before the imminent absence of limbs, it must be pointed out that in this exhibition the face possesses the challenging role of expressing a whole range of feelings all by itself.

Feelings that invade the human being at times with spontaneity and others manipulated by our own will.

One of the pieces shows a peculiar touch of stoicism; precise African features, such as thick lips and a firm and profound look. Another one shows transversal features and conveys the porcelain like skin of the western woman.

A blushed face in another piece carries a silent scream that seems forbidden to come out of the throat. One more of the sculptures show a heart about to explode, like a blooming flower that speaks of the anguish produced by the unexpected.

Each one of he sculptures claims its particular space in the time that witnesses their birth. Besides as a whole, they are like a living peculiar language, which in its elegance served as and instrument for Silvia to conform by using wood and plaster some chapters of her artistic life.

You may recognize the creator in the work, not by the physical presence but by the urgency of improvisation, sculpted in the figures, revealed as an intimate, rapid and imprecise note, and later strictly ensemble by the carving of hands, hammer and chisel. Such sentimental cloudiness, that finds its contour in the vital effort and the firm hand, culminates in a testament that serves as a manifesto for Silvia’s creativity and mostly for her search of perfection.