membership / artist member

Marta Marcé

http://www.martamarce.com
download cv here

biography

Marte Marce was featured in Contemporary Art Society's ARTfutures 2005 and ARTfutures 2004.

statement

I have an interest in exploring concepts that are basic to our human condition. I am interested in the human consciousness, the capacity to reflect on our own nature, to abstract and to reason. I want to express and explore concepts like space, matter, time, light, order, chance and chaos. I want to explore the relationship of these ideas with different series of artwork. I am interested in gaining knowledge from different disciplines like philosophy and science to expand my artwork.

I am interested in the various abstract systems that humans have created to understand life. Geometry is one of these systems that we have used to measure reality and it has its origins in mathematics. This system helps us to understand the forms and its relation with space in the world. Geometry can be seen as an alive creature that continually evolves; we keep exploring the different random shapes that make up our real world. Recently I have started to explore the relationship this can have with philosophy and quantic mechanics. Life is movement and energy is constantly transforming the elements and this energy is contained in matter and perceived in colours (light).

In the paintings, the activity/movement balances control with chance, giving an uncertain result. Rules can provide a basis for the painting, issuing instructions and outlining my strategies. At the same time decision-making, chance and judgments allow the break of the system, enjoying a fresh and direct creative action, opening up possibilities in the outcomes. I use basic, sometimes geometric, shapes. At the same time these are not rigid painted shapes but hand-painted suggesting the human activity in the artwork.   

Colour and its different qualities are an important aspect of my practice. Colours are neither pure nor impure, neither beautiful nor ugly. I see colour as light that impacts on forms and materials that have relevance on how we perceive our cultural and visual world.

Reflecting on the way we live I believe humans tend to have the impulse of being in control as well as feeling free. Societies are becoming more structured, planned and controlled. This could be compared with a complex group of rule games or laws that everybody is made to follow but at the same time there always are alternatives to the system. I have used the idea of games in painting as an expanded field.

I want to create a space for experimentation and play within painting. I want my artwork to have an immense energy, at once vibrant and full of humanity.

-Marta Marcé 2009