hurrengoa
desire. no desire blanca orĂ­a   Hundreds of ostrich feathers that look like a huge blanket grow out of a plug hole in a bath. Two white balls of mohair that look like drops of sperm hang from a sheet. Two innocent looking leather shoes in the shape of feet look threatening with their long toenails. Mabi Revuelta's world is beautiful and amazingly surprising, innocent and morbidly attractive and warm yet frozen. We'd love to throw our arms around it or maybe just despise it. Or perhaps we're afraid of it.
Her colours are fleshy tones, those of the body: Her textures are as warm as wool, leather, and feathers. They're as cold as metal and as worrying as latex. Her latest creations in ceramics shy away from the coldness of the materials used by changing their outward appearance. She achieves this by colouring her work as if they were organic matter, and the whites and pinks she uses create a meaty type texture that is much less harsher that the stony underneath. She took part in "La torre herida por el rayo" - the foundation that brought so many young artists' work to Guggenheim Bilbao - and later her work went on show in Madrid. The always soft and changeable ostrich flowers smothered the coldness of a bath and gave the carded piece a sense of warmth.
She brought imagery and movement to her approach in her work in "Leda Vuela". The project brought together the work of different female artists. All those involved presented a video. Mabi Revuelta's image took the form of a "Clockwaltz" in which she placed a camera on an skater as they skated around an icerink. One again we were confronted by a delicate and ethereal mixture of risk and threat. A slippery dance on the edge of a knife. Mabi Revuelta's most recent work can be seen at the Vanguardia Gallery in Bilbao.