Anna Maria Maiolino, Ações Matéricas

About

Galleria Raffaella Cortese presents the fourth chapter of its collaboration with Anna Maria Maiolino, which completes the exhibition of the various expressions of her work in Italy. In the previous shows held in 2010, 2015, and 2019, the gallery showcased her practice through videos, photographs, and sculptures. Through an array of mediums Maiolino explores the fundamental themes of Brazilian history and their relation to issues of political, civil, personal, and expressive freedom that are vital not only for Brazil but for the evolution of the international cultural landscape since the 1960s and 1970s.

Ações Matéricas gives an insight into Anna Maria Maiolino’s pictorial production for the first time in the gallery. Presented in via A. Stradella 1, these paintings bear witness to the performative dimension of Maiolino’s practice, built on bodily movements and action, encompassing the artist’s intense decennial research. Created with acrylic tempera on paper or canvas, these works attest to the four essential aspects of the artist’s work: space, time, movement, and body.

The creative process is connected to the spatiality of the support on which the paint is poured. The inclination of the canvas determines the color’s movement on its surface, guided by the gravitational force. Additionally, time influences how the paint slides over the area, affecting its density and flow. The final outcome is the result of the interaction between the unpredictable, abstract movement of the color led by the force of gravity, and the artist’s active intervention, piloting the color. This mechanical displacement of matter within a field of forces combines with the heat of the body and the willpower of the artist.

Hence, four open and growing series of pictorial works are born: Ações Matéricas and Propícios, on canvas, and Codificações Matéricas and Novas Codificações, on paper. The artist’s body is at the core of these artworks, guiding their creation, directing the trail that the color leaves by sliding towards unexpected directions. The repetitive aspect of these series is not intended to provide a reliable means of achieving a pre-defined end result, but rather a genuine exchange of energy within the flow of time as the foundation of change and movement, which ensures the generation of difference.