Visualizing Light and Enlightenment Ideology in ‘Glimmer’”

The European Enlightenment championed faith in the human spirit, ingenuity and our capacity to reason and overcome adversity. Scientific discoveries in the 18 th -century modernized Western civilization, but it also inspired us to ask questions, inquire, solve complex problems and, more importantly, have faith in our ability to move forward intellectually. Although the Enlightenment was the philosophical sunrise for a new era in social progress over two centuries ago, we still see reiterations of this positivist spirit in various forms in our world today, whether it be in architecture, literature, design, cuisine, fashion or art. In Julia San Román’s series called, “Glimmer,” we find ourselves before a bifurcated, intense, compact and abrupt visual space where Enlightenment energy is revisited once again. In several iterations of “Glimmer” we see that the pictorial plane is divided into two very different languages to underscore the brilliance of the spirit of the Enlightenment. These two juxtaposed visual languages are accentuated to paint us a poignant philosophical contrast all too familiar: the tension between anxious, emotional, melancholic and expressive reality and the more abstract space characterized by clarity, intelligence, reason and optimistic determinism. They are clearly two opposing spaces and forces, and, for San Román, this graphic union in "Glimmer” underscores the beauty, necessity and desire for eternal hope and optimism.