Ara Starck, Artist
by Chris Chaplow
Ara spoke to a handful of press at the inauguration of La Almazara Museum and her enormous mural on the ceiling of the museum and restaurant.
"I remember the first time I came to La Almanzara in Ronda, when I was invited to create the 900-square-metre mural on the ceiling. I wanted to understand "What is Ronda?" and "What is here?" and "What is the whole idea?
I didn't understand much because I just received a kind of whirlpool of emotions. It was mainly vibrations, and that's why you read the word passion, because there's something pulsating up and down all the time. I just had this extreme feeling of tension and not much else.
I took my brushes and tried to put all these sensations on my canvas with pigments, with all the mediums I normally use. I wanted to try to translate and transcend the feeling I had when I first arrived.
That's why we have this floating apparition, we don't know if it's a friend, a guard or one of the souls of this place, floating in this liquid gold that is this liquid life, surrounded by this arena that is so powerful and so architecturally important in Ronda. At the same time, for me it was the gates to another imaginary world, which I think is this place that has been built.
You come here and you continue this whirlwind of emotions - that's what I'm trying to do".
Q. The question that runs through the viewer's mind as they look up to see the 30 metre by 30 metre canvas hung perfectly horizontally, without a single crease or seam, 30 metres above them is - is it one piece?
A. It's a complicated, very complicated structure, but it's in one piece.
About Ara Starck (from arastarck.com)
Born in Paris, France, Ara Starck is a non-conformist, multi-disciplinary storyteller. Inspired by the idea of transcendence, both literally and figuratively, Ara sees her focus on large scale painting installations as a driving force in her work.
Ara’s ambition is to create works of encounters. Her creations are often a complex game in which central figures move in a phantasmagorical world as an invitation to dream. Her work welcomes viewers into a diagonal world where optical distortions and metamorphosis reveal a richness of ghostly movements.