On January 29th, I went to the art exhibition entitled Sacabo & Rulfo : The Unreachable World of Susan San Juan by Josephine Sacabo. This exhibition was at the Alkek B. Library on the 7th floor. It was composed of Josephine Sacabo's photographs which are an impressionistic response to the book, Pedro Paramo, written by Juan Rulfo. There are a few works of photographic art and chairs you can rest on in this exhibition. The lighting in the exhibit was very good, so I was able to see these works very well.
Pedro Paramo is a psychological novel; it represents Susan San Juan's passion, a loss of identity, anger, pain, and loneliness. This is evident in her works" gloomy and stormy atmosphere. Also, these works have the same theme and process, and there is no individual growth in the art because the works are related to the book. Only black and white colors are used, but she uses certain techniques which do not require contrast of color. One technique used is a composite photograph. This technique is used many times in her work. To relay the concept of her work she uses photographs of clouds. For example, in Cactus 1 (1998), Ms. Sacabo uses this technique. She combines a cactus's photograph and photographs of clouds. Even if the cactus and clouds are overlapping, it does not look strange because it looks like part of the cactus is catching the sun. This effect is shown using black and white photographs because it would look strange if she used colorful photographs in her works. In The Ruins (1998), she combines clouds with the debris from a church. These clouds look like smoke coming out of the debris. These clouds work well with the debris. My favorite works using this technique are The Rain (1997), Christ (2001), and The Wind (1997). In The Rain (1997), clouds are combined with grassland. In this picture, obscure clouds become the rain, but some of the bigger clouds stay as clouds; this contrast creates the raining grassland.