Although until recently she was mostly known to the local Chilean art-scene, Argentine-born but Chilean-based Catalina Bauer is an international contemporary artist star on the ascent.

Her first true global break came with her inclusion in the show Tectonic Shift, an exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery and Phillips de Pury in London last year featuring the Chilean Contemporary Collection of art patron Juan Yarur of which she was part.  That yielded an invitation to the Moscow Biennale.  Who knows what’s next… Venice? I certainly hope so.

One of the things that attracts me the most about her work is that it is not necessarily trying to convey a specific message but rather, conveys major themes with mundane objects such as the act of repetition or toil which forms the basis of our everyday.  So whether it’s thousands of intertwined rubber bands to create her Columns (above and center) or the hundreds of small plastic bags filled with water to build her world map (bottom), Bauer’s wholly original work is about building a larger whole through smaller repetitive steps using the same materials.

I wonder what she would think about creating a private commission for the entrance of a client’s home in Madrid?