"The idea of multiple points of view was introduced at the beginning of last century, and for the plastic artist the problem does not only involve showing that space contains this multiplicity, but also showing that all the different points of view are equally valid and that one of them cannot be used to validate all the rest. One of the great revolutions in modern art is to have stopped presenting space as a reality created by the eye, like the Renaissance artist watching reality go by through his window without paying attention to what was around him.
One of the problems facing me was to demonstrate and bring to light what is around us, to give the same importance to what is behind, above, underneath, because all of that is an integral part of the whole."

"Scientists have shown with extraordinary precision that Man is an infinitesimal particle in the universe, and this loss of geocentrism and egocentrism necessarily leads us to reflect on the importance of anthropomorphism. [...] The individual considered from a universal standpoint has no importance, he is just a tiny particle in an environment that is insignificant from the point of view of the universe. But this does not mean that to be an integral part of the universe, Man has to be infinite himself. The human condition is only one state in an endless series of transformations through which matter passes. One of these may be Man, who has a value identical to that of all animal, mineral or vegetable forms. I think just being human doesn't give us the right to consider ourselves to be the culmination of this entire evolutionary chain."

Text by Jesús Rafael Soto
Venezuelan kinetic painter and sculptor (1923 – 2005)
http://www.jr-soto.com

Images by Maribel Mas
Time Lines Litho 3, 2 and 4. 
Stone lithography on paper Arches Velin,  62 x 49 cm, 2016.
http://www.maribelmas.com/

If you are interested in being the next artist at Reside Residency then feel free to have a look at the application information and send your submission via the contact form
on this site. The deadline for application is 27 January 2017.

Tracing fine lines, I can observe with curiosity and silent respect, the force that comes from them as small parts of
a growing form. They reunite themselves in a flexible structure with unexpected strength.

Standing back and looking at the drawings with some distance, these fragile lines seem to lose their individual character and almost become invisible, joined in their movement around the center and in their opening into the space. But looking closer, they recover their clear and sharp presence, one by one. It is not necessary to notice any outline or shape, to force them to have an individual character: they stand on their own, going slightly different directions, creating vibrating interferences in their crossing.

There was a time in the history of art, when "the individual gesture" was valued in a drawing, when a "unique style" and "originality", were taken to the extreme, becoming a kind of conceptual circus for an exclusive group of intellectuals, There was a time, when art was used to reveal the hidden meanings of signs, to make them appear transcendental through complicated discourses. Maybe, features like universality and timelessness were not considered quite as important back then. There was the urgency to "express" oneself as loud as possible, against the institutions of a conservative society – using violence against violence.
Understanding, endurance, and sustainability seem to be the new values. They are reflected in different ways in contemporary works of art, as an active part of society.
Indeed, the classic figure of the lonely hero sacrificing himself for some "high ideal" now has an echo of fascism or fanaticism, of a particularist and excluding way of thinking.

The hard-fought freedom of art that was wrested from religious and political obligations is nowadays under threat of being kidnapped again by moral causes and economic interests. There is no question that art plays a role in bringing social change. And yet it's a misunderstanding to turn it into an instrument, and force the viewer to limit his perception to established ideas of how-to-look and what-to-see.

Are explanations, not basically limitations? The moment of contemplation should be respected with silence, as an intimate moment of encounter and joy.

Maribel Mas

Translated by David Burnett

The previous ink drawings on japanese paper will be presented in the catalogue Interferences published by MMKoehn, Leipzig-Berln, 2017.
The drawings from the Interferences series will be part of a solo exhibition in the gallery Thaler Originalgrafik in the Spinnerei, the Leipzig Book Fair 2017 and the gallery A Cuadros in Madrid.
http://www.maribelmas.com/

The work of Maribel Mas repeatedly investigates the fascination with and significance of traditional painting techniques in the digital age. A meticulous illustrator and
a graphic artist with a penchant for experimentation,
her speciality and passion are lines. These, to her, are not contours, but have a quality all of their own.

Magnetic field lines, repetitive concentricity, interfering waves, these are the scientific domains of line that lead an independent an emancipated existence in Mas's works.
The artist uses a stencil to inscribe a glass plate coated with hard automotive paint, loop upon loop in meditative process.

She is obviously well aware of the creative energy of repetition, a cardinal feature of the conceptual avant-garde.
She occasionally interrupts the regularity of her serial structure, because, as she says, "chance is an inestimable source of possibilities". The subsequent addition of a single red loop on the exposed paper is a reminder of uncontrollable disruptive factors, in science as well as in art.

Susanne Altmann

Text from the catalog "Cliché verre",
Maria und Vlado Ondrej Atelier für Radierung,
Spinnerei, Leipzig.
Edited by: MMKoehn Verlag
Translated by David Burnett

Drawing, more than a discipline, is a place I can delve into
and get lost, only to reappear elsewhere.
It is something unexpected and is always frightening.
My only companion is the faith to go on, line by line, no second intentions, devoted to the task, trusting that the drawing will grow, if only I protect it from trends, discourses, and other easy temptations of the ego… if only I protect it from myself can it develop and perhaps became a sanctuary for other viewers.

Maribel Mas

Translated by David Burnett.

El dibujo, más que una disciplina, es un lugar donde puedo adentrarme y perderme, para reaparecer en otro punto.
Es algo inesperado, que siempre atemoriza.
Sólo me acompaña la fe de seguir adelante, línea a línea,
sin segundas intenciones, entregada a la tarea, confiando
que el dibujo crecerá si lo protejo con dedicación de tendencias, discursos y otras tentaciones fáciles para el ego… sólo si lo protejo de mi misma puede que se desarrolle y sirva de refugio a otras miradas.

Special thanks to:

Norito Hasegawa, Shingo Nishimura and Tsuyoshi Nakahara,
Japanese paper masters from Aoya and their families,
for sharing their hand made "Inshu Washi" from Tottori province: unique Ganpi, Kouzo and Mitsumata papers.

Thomas Siemon, printmaker at his "carpe plumbum" workshop in the Spinnerei Leipzig, for selecting and preparing the wooden discs to print their annual growth rings.

Galerie Hoch und Partner, for showing "Time Lines" series (Zeitlinien) in their space in Tapetenwerk, Leipzig.

And I got a strong feeling of the passage of time. Not the time of clouds and sun and rain and the moving stars that adorn the night, not spring when it comes or fall, not the time that makes leaves bud on branches and then tears them off or folds and unfolds and colors the flowers, but the time inside me, the time you can’t see but it molds us. The time that rolls on and on in people’s hearts and makes them roll along with it and gradually changes us inside and out and makes us what we’ll be on our dying day.

— Mercè Rodoreda, exiled Catalan writer.
Lines from her novel La Plaça del Diamant, quoted by Carlos Velasco with reference to my series of drawings “Time Lines,” exhibited in his Madrid gallery A Cuadros.
English version translated by David Rosenthal.

The experience of living somewhere else for a while, of doing a project outside your own workshop, can be a great opportunity to break with established routines and distance yourself from a safe and familiar place, allowing you to discover new possibilities… a risk with unpredictable results. 

But isn’t it possible to make this break without even leaving your city? I’ve been mulling over this question ever since receiving the invitation from British artist Serena Smith to take part in the Reside Residency project.
It seems like the perfect opportunity to reconsider my own working process – a moment of reflection, looking backwards and forwards, but centering on the present moment and the series of drawings “Time Lines,” an attempt to understand the development of my work in relation to my personal space and, most of all, my personal time.

Back to the beginning:
Time Lines drawings

Two months spent as a guest artist in the Spinnerei, Leipzig, alone in an empty apartment in a totally empty building, factory housing from 1904. Silence, interrupted at night only by cargo trains crossing Plagwitz Station without stopping. From the opposite side, beyond the garden, come faraway noises in the daytime, from the artist community working, and sometimes living, in the old disused factory. It is hard to guess just what exactly is going on inside there, behind the broad windows and heavy bricks walls, it looks so distant and unreal.

Inside these old walls, disconnected from the outside world, with no Internet, TV or radio, and coming from the noisy and crowded city center of Barcelona, my perception of time has completely changed. Now fully concentrating on my work, the drawings made of fine lines start growing in a slow but steady rhythm. In a few days the first “Time Lines” drawings completely fill the walls, altering the atmosphere of the room. With these drawings around me, I was no longer alone.

Maribel Mas

Translated by David Burnett.