(Vera de Bidasoa)

Untitled (Life and death). 2011
33.4 x 41 x 20 cm.
Box and skull (assemblage)
Acquisition by MACE. 2012

“A study of the iconographic values in the work of Isabel Echarri is decisive when it comes to facing up to its meaning and its potential significance because, in addition to what is already clear, there is a subtle secrecy enclosed in the form and the material. A study should not stop at – and this is what is interesting – the morphology which is made reality - with variables - in forms made with paper or from paper; this is the more or less textured base material into which we need to meticulously plunge to get beneath the specific appearances, shredding the universe of the subtle, objective contributions and their relationships with the texts which are frequently inscribed to discover the metaphors and allegories which are underlying and which contain the poetic-philosophical flow of her intentions.” E.R.S. Booklet Life and Death hand installation. MACE. 2012-2013.
This work was part of that exhibition and brings it together like no other author's approach. The main idea is a meditation on life and death and the work is a vanitas, in which the skull is not lacking as ambivalent symbol of the transience of life and transcendence of death.
This still life locked in this box or briefcase, on the top carried the image of the chessboard, another symbol that refers to the spatio-temporal coordinates that are required for the development of life, understood as required "game" or transit between a safe and necessary beginning and an end.