Beatriz Ros goes hunting

"We are always prey for another person," she says. And we have come here, to this exhibition, to hunt. Or to be hunted, maybe. We shall see.

Because in 'La boca', Beatriz Ros turns elements of hunting into artistic, almost lyrical, material - as well as being an artist, she is also a poet - and creates her works in the mode of visual metaphors.

This latest exhibition presents different sets of deer antlers, spreading out like the branch of a tree. 'La boca' is also an illustration of the artist's career, because the display includes knots, and stitches, from previous projects such as 'Mi vida nunca' (2016, a joint exhibition with Violeta Niebla), 'Heartself' (2014) and 'En paralelo' (2012).

So, in a way, the deer almost becomes her alter ego. For example, in the installation called 'Adiós', the projector shows the image of a golden deer whose eye (the eye of Ros) blinks to send a message in morse code - a verse taken from the poem 'Pasión de la Tierra' by Vicente Alexandre: "If blood had eyes, the slowest eyelashes would fan the way. Goodbye."

Executioner and prey

Blood appears to tinge the tense red ribbons in front of the screen, a finishing line coagulated with embroidered words. A phrase: 'Ahí hay un hombre que dice ¡ay!', used in schools to teach pupils to spell, features here as a game of relations, of mirrors, in the piece 'Ars memoriae', supported by deer antlers.

"I wanted to commemorate the act of looking on as prey, but also as executioner," says Ros, standing in front of the work which links with the video 'Mi pecho es un bosque de flechas' ('My breast is a forest of arrows') which was also included in 'Heartself' and was exhibited at the Faculty of Fine Arts at Malaga University nearly three years ago.

The visual poetry of Ros continues to shine with special intensity in the video.

The exhibition offers four striking examples, two diptychs, beside the installation mentioned above, which presides over the main room. In the first, Ros handles a black stone like a gambler, the dark rock appearing to be another metaphor, like a clot, or a tumour. To one side, there are feathers, also black. And there is the sound of birds. And shots.

Ros is lying down like an arrow in a violet field, in another video of 'La boca'. And opposite the screen, a display case has ten spikes, made with glass from a television screen. "The thing that reflects us and injures us," she says.

Nothing is accidental in the work of Rosa, whose spikes recall Paleolothic remains: nine found in the bodies of animals and one, inside a human. The point when hunting becomes homicide.

Ros appears wrapped and unwrapped in red silk in another video, 'El orden de los labios', the most sensual part of 'La boca'. It is intimate, and her darkened room is separated from the rest by opaque fabric.

And then another work awaits: 'Prueba de acción'. Two sets of antlers facing each other, in combat. And there are two black mirrors, one on one side, one on the other. They both reflect your face. Because you are the hunter. And the prey.