The Gathering 

Curator: Right now, we're looking at Remedios Varo's intriguing oil painting, "The Gathering". Editor: A haunting piece, isn’t it? Almost like a fairytale gone slightly askew. The muted colors create a sense of mystery, and that figure emerging from what looks like a doorway... gives me the chills in a beautiful way. Curator: There's definitely an unsettling grace about it. Varo, I think, wants us to feel both drawn in and deeply wary. She seems to me a storyteller, but instead of words she used her knowledge of chemistry to grind the pigments into paints which almost glow, each telling a bit more of her tale. Editor: The intricate details of the figures clothing fascinates me, almost like frost on a winter pane. You have to wonder, were these intricate layers the height of some haute bourgeois craft that she's subverting, or perhaps a coded language expressing constraints. And why the repetition of animal features in each figure's face? Curator: The dream world comes alive in this work, a blending of the scientific and the fantastical that so typified Varo. The animal features? A touch of the alchemical perhaps, animals have forever served as guides between worlds. Editor: Could the wood of the door itself be significant, perhaps acting as a visual metaphor for thresholds. And why such careful construction and craftsmanship in the fabrication of such hallucinatory scene? A rebellion through artistry and industry perhaps. Curator: Yes, her precision, and almost devotional handling of oil-paint, it sets this image apart. I think she used these very solid materials, the paints and board and brushes, as an antidote to all of that whirling uncertainty we humans face as the modern world began unraveling itself into ever stranger shapes. And now? I feel almost as unsettled as when I first laid eyes on her surreal little world. Editor: An interesting tension between process and narrative. And yes, her work still manages to unsettle, even when we’ve partially decoded the materials from which her artistic vision took shape.