Chilean artist Francisca Ahlers wants to transport you to a different time and place: the romance of time gone by seeps into her pieces and infuses them with an alluring nature.
It’s easy to get lost in the detail of her works, which often depict vast rooms or spaces brimming with the decorative – rich patterns, textures and objects. It is not unusual to spy a peacock or a cat, chandeliers, expensive porcelain and extravagant rugs amongst luxuriant wallpaper and lavishly tiled floors.
Yet there is something almost dystopian to her works, too; an alternative reality. There is a sense of emptiness or loss, a lacking of energy that contrasts with the many details on offer. Sometimes the spaces lack people, sometimes they feature only ghostly portraits hung on the wall, and when there are present figures, they appear distant and perhaps forlorn, as if they are completely unaware of the decadence in which they inhabit.
Are these characters neurotic? Eccentric aristocracies? Or are they about to meet their demise and fall from riches to rags?
These features – the decadent and the feeling of loss – amalgamate into the curious. As a viewer, you can’t help but be curious about Ahlers’ works – you want to see more, learn more, know more, understand more about these timeless places, beautiful spaces and eerie figures.
Like a plaster that begs to be removed, as a viewer your eye is compulsively dragged across Ahlers’ picture planes. This is perhaps because they are rife with peaks and with declines: there is something fascinating about observing such riches with such emptiness. And these concepts are immortalised by Ahlers’ strokes.
Ahlers uses the medium of charcoal, and, in some works, acrylic. The contrast of mediums and of colour with darkness only serves to heighten the ethereal quality that’s present. It is as if they are slowly fading into nothing, into the past.
Remnants of the masters are prevalent within her spaces; Picasso and Vermeers, and also the whimsical illustrations of Quentin Blake, Ludwig Bemelmans and Lauren Child. But though inspiration is pulled from many corners, Ahlers works are, on the whole, something completely different. They are original and new, and refreshing to the eye.
To see more by Ahlers, her works can be found at Villa del Arte, a collection of galleries located in Spain, in Holland, and online.