Martha Zuik| Centro Cultural Recoleta

Martha Zuik

Exhibition catalogue from Martha Zuik‘s solo show at the Centro Cultural Recoleta in Buenos Aires with text by Otfried Schütz:

“When she enters the painting with colour, the linkages of the different segments between themselves get even ampler than in her drawings-formats are more impetuous and demand from the composition a greater intensity of the respective autonomies of colours and forms. No colour appears in isolation, each is always defined taking their starting point from their surrounding. Thus there arise chromatic s scales that become triads which, in turn, constitute the chromatic modulations of the paintings. Some are based on a central triad, while in others are detected rhythmic oscillations, rich in contrasts, that unite to form a many-sided chorus. In such fields of tension modulations and hues of extraordinary softness expand establishing some sort of comforting harmony among the various fields of contrast.

However, since no colour appears without a form, Martha Zuik combines the intrinsic excitability of colour with the limitation, the transparency of the voluminousness to which it is subjected, or rather, to which this colour remains constituently linked. The artist applies the most multiple variants to this phenomenon of colour, especially in those cases where she places a graphic trance or a structure on the colour. With them she obtains an additional argumentation that enriches the colourful links of the chromatic fields by adding a new plane. Hence the richness and universality of her painting. The observer’s adventure lies in penetrating this mystery; without the observer the whole causality cannot reach the desired effect. The observer always has to experience as such the feasible solution the artist provides, renouncing to the expectations themselves that the contemplation of a work of art with a view to recognition suggests. Thus the encounter with her paintings becomes an adventure insofar as the observer manages to fathom into the most profound horizons of the artist’s thought. With this aim, she helps the observer to cross her own spiritual barriers. Here lies seduction, the unmistakable possibility the artist and the observer have of overcoming the horizons of genuine personal expectations. Martha Zuik belongs to a circle of painters who, even when they give name to their paintings, repeatedly surprise the observer by not complying with what the title implies. What else can an art lover expect? In this way, art, dispensing with all the theoretical judgment, becomes a pleasant act of understanding, recognition and intuition, able to spiritually overcome limits of geography and time.”

Martha Zuik, Martha Zuik, Centro Cultural Recoleta, Argentina, 2001

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