Double Square 双方藝廊

Double Square Gallery is pleased to announce Objects of Desire: Where Micro and Macro Open in All Directions, a solo exhibition by Spanish artist Ana de Alvear, running from August 15 to September 26. This exhibition will focus on the artist's highly representative hyper-real trompe-l'œil drawings created using only colored pencils. With her virtuoso craft and conceptual investigation, de Alvear creates a poetic interaction between the micro and the macro. Through carefully staged visual tales, she invites viewers to step beyond their sensory comfort zone, transforming both physical and spiritual perception.
The exhibition title, Objects of Desire: Where Micro and Macro Open in All Directions, intertwines inspiration from the artist's own statement and the renowned book On Longing by poet and critic Susan Stewart, which explores scale and collection. In analyzing the gigantic and the miniature, Stewart posits the body as the primary mode of perceiving scale, pointing out the paradox of the body as both container and contained. Ana de Alvear's colored-pencil drawings reflect this dialectic between body and scale: when gazing into a microcosmic universe, we seem to acquire an omniscient and transcendent visual mastery, yet when confronting a gigantic, vast space, our bodies are reduced to partial fragments enveloped and swallowed by the surroundings. We are left to merely navigate the landscape, attempting to abstractly project our perception onto the vast external world.
The artist has long explored psychological archetypes within the human subconscious. Her work deliberately separates elements of reality from their habitual contexts, shifting their intrinsic meaning and blurring inherent boundaries. Throughout the exhibition, viewers will constantly navigate between extreme reduction and magnification. In terms of the microcosmic vision, the MOSS series plays with reality and visual illusion; these works, which appear to be miniature contact strips of macro photography, are actually colored pencil drawings measuring 66 x 96 cm. The OBJECT OF COLLECTION series, presenting the idea that "all children start collecting colored stones... we are hoarders," echoes Stewart's observation that the essence of the collection is the replacement of time and history with spatial classification. By hoarding and controlling objects, humanity constructs a hermetic universe within a private space that can be completely mastered. This longing to internalize the external world is also de Alvear's profound interpretation of "objects of desire."
At the same time, the exhibition also presents a macrocosmic vision. In the NOTHING (Labyrinth) series, de Alvear intricately outlines an endless labyrinth filled with reflections that move, open, and close. These spaces, opening in all directions, break the established boundaries of the viewer's body as both container and contained. Through the juxtaposition of these extreme miniature and gigantic hyper-real scenes—constructed entirely with colored pencils—the artist ingeniously merges the micro and the macro within the gallery space. She compels viewers to rediscover their own limits within the seamless transition between the miniature and the gigantic, achieving a profound transformation of physical and spiritual perception.