Zilia Sánchez blurs boundaries between media with an idiosyncratic practice of sculptural canvases. In Lunar (1980), representation is reduced to its abstract essentials. Playing with the intersection of real and pictorial depth, Sánchez paints concentric circles in a gradation of grey hues, which mimic the waxing and waning of the moon as the viewer walks around the work. The cool tones of Sánchez’s minimal palette are augmented by real shadow at the axial cleft between the two almost symmetrical hemispheres. The precise matte finish, cool tones, and protruding profile of Lunar are all characteristic of the shaped-canvas format for which Sánchez was best known. Treating the fabric as a screen and skin, Sánchez would pull it taut over wooden armatures that she first moulded by hand. Lunar swells out into curves and crevices that resemble lips or breasts, an abstract biomorphism that encodes female sexuality in the round face of the moon.
—Lucia Neirotti
