Eliecer Cárdenas/Writer, art critic /Ecuador
... The Venezuelan artist living in Ecuador presents the proposal "I belong to Mother Earth, whose title is already an aesthetic and principled statement, that is, a tribute and defense of Mother Earth or Pacha Mama...
... The installation "The Earth also cries" represents the destruction of the planet and her cry, seeing what her children do to her. It is the Earth that cries, not the sky, according to the particular concept of artist Karen Schulze. The installation is elaborated with cotton threads, silk, glass, vegetables, sand, earth, barbed wire and other elements that offer a multiplicity of proposals and materials integrated to the conceptual purpose of the installation, this is a plastic allegory, three-dimensional, of the sufferings of the planet Earth, it is a simile of Calvary and the torments of Jesus Christ. Karen Schulze handles languages that have to do with the Kundalini, the cosmic energy and Samsara, all this encompassed in a metaphor of the Tsunami of Japan, which can be seen in the elements of this valuable artistic proposal, where she has united her talents and expressiveness in various techniques, to form a whole of undoubted aesthetic and conceptual impact.
Extracted from the text of the individual exhibition I Belong to Mother Earth.
House of Culture. Cuenca. Ecuador 2011
Marco Martínez Espinoza / Visual artist / Ecuador
To contemplate Karen Schulze's work through her symbols and signs is to make a journey into the depths of the image and to confront a true authenticity between artistic creation and her feelings. In a world full of all kinds of violence, including visual violence, her paintings are like a rest for the spirit that transcends to higher stages in a true symphony of colors and forms.
Just as the viewer initiates a dialogue within the work, so the artist enters into a harmony between her painting and sculpture, which communicate in a language rich in form, as well as composition and chromatics carefully treated. The whole continent of signs and symbols present in Schulze's work are extracted from those four elements that make up the universe and that she, with her plastic interpretation, converts them into contents that transcend the profane and are established in a sphere that for many is astral.
The artist has successfully traveled the road of art with a rigorous academic preparation, and a personal research in the use of techniques and materials that distinguish her as a creator of new spaces in the national plastic arts, which is supported by recognitions in national and international Salons.
Extracted from the text of the catalog of the individual exhibition Pertenezco a la madre Tierra (I Belong to Mother Earth). House of Culture. Cuenca. Ecuador 2011
Pilar Taboada / Visual artist, art critic / Spain
(...) An essentially heartfelt and masterfully realized work. Schulze, knowledgeable of the history of art, of the movements of the renovating vanguards and their influence in the transcendental changes that took place throughout history, as well as of the new languages of art and its grammar; intellectually with valid arguments to sustain her plastic discourse; skillful in the handling of the technical and material resources, represents in her work, a temporal and phenomenal world, symbolizing a mobile image of eternity to create a dialogue between the elements and the cosmogonic, earth, air, sky, man, universe, etc. Represented from a matrix of circles that move and the forms that derive from them, transmuting them on its surface into symbolic signs and temporal instances, of an archetypal remote time.
Contemplating Karen Schulze's work is a delight for the spirit. And, also, a challenge to the intelligence, a call to reflection. Does she perceive her work platform as a sacred space to find serenity for the soul? For the mind? Because it is there where thought germinates and ideas emerge. A place that amplifies the inner sound, that propitiates that instant that precedes the magical ritual of creation? A premonitory instant of the frenetic ritual that implies the whole process, which mediates between the intention and the result.
Whatever the answer may be, what is certain is that we find ourselves before a brilliant creator and a singular work (...)
Extracted from the text of the catalog of the exhibition Encontrando Caminos.
House of Culture. Guayaquil. Ecuador 2010
Inés M. Flores / Art curator, museographer, art historian / Ecuador
Her symbol-laden works offer a chromatic panorama of remarkable characteristics. In them one can perceive innovations based on a lucid attitude, and a relentless artistic work, due to his extraordinary understanding of time. On the other hand, the color in his work is as if he were also capturing the trembling of the air reverberating under the sun. She observes, investigates, reflects and her perceptions are reflected in each canvas, with disturbing intensity.
Karen Schulze plays with creative expression, questions what remains of the figurative substratum: the human scale, the figure-ground relationship, and explores circular formats, evocative of the universal symbol of infinity and the totality of movement. The artist thus crosses the new frontiers of the plastic arts, in an astonishing display of creativity...
Extracted from the text of the catalog of the exhibition Finding Paths.
House of Culture. Guayaquil. Ecuador 2010.
