Containment: The Tao of Aesthetics

Marta Estrems, …estás en la otra orilla y entonces ahora hermano??? From “Containment” Series, 2012, charcoal, graphite, pastel medium and newspaper on canvas, 66” x 65.” Photo: Mariano Costa-Peuser.

By Rafael López-Ramos

When painting, Marta Estrems pins her canvases directly on the wall to get the support she needs to brush, sponge and hand rub paint with enough energy and intensity to create simple abstract yet expressive signs that equally embody violence and balance. She inscribes her gestures as if she were walking along a beach dragging a tree branch on the wet sand, leaving behind that “trace” that haunts French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy-viewing art not as a representation but a presentation, a staging of an endless exposure to “being” as always “being with” and to “existence” as “co-existence.” Her paintings feature colors muted to the point that they might be perceived as huge drawings, a sequence of grayscale scribbles applied to thin layers of charcoal and pastel that spin about an occasional red spot or around themselves, surfing over an intense concert of grays that range from black to the antique white of virgin canvas. It is reminiscent of old-fashioned newsprint as found in Estrems’ collage; the piece has clippings referring to the morality-immorality of war, hinting at what is going on in the rest of the series on a symbolic level. From this dark statement emerges a reminder of our perishable human condition.

Estrems is definitively an action painter, though her work more closely resembles European Tachisme than American abstract expressionism-it especially evokes the gestures of Mathieu, Hartung and Wols. Nevertheless, beyond its clear affiliation with lyrical abstraction, Estrems’ work closely relates to Taoist painting, an art form that grasps the essence of Taoism through the representation of nature, simplicity and the balance of yin and yang in order to project the feeling of harmony derived from both strength and the simplicity of life and nature. Yin is the air found in the emptiness of a background, while yang represents full figures and images, all of which refer to a false duality, as the ancient Chinese believed that matter and energy are one and the same.

Marta Estrems’ painting bears a power and energy similar to that generated by whirling dervishes and tai chi masters, the force created and displaced by the human body moving through space with certain intention and at a given pace. It is hard to imagine how a petite, mature woman can handle such enormous canvases and inscribe them with the vigor and violence we read on their surfaces. The signs and traces her hand and arm leave on the canvas is a metaphor for a world in pain and the unrest she witnesses around her, both near and far. Yet, when a woman becomes that annoyed it’s much better that she grabs a brush rather than a gun, because the result can lead to evolution, instead of revolution. Thus, she seems to continue Fritjof Capra’s The Tao of Physics as her own in her exhibition “The Tao of Aesthetics.”

Marta Estrems’ “Containment: The Tao of Aesthetics,” curated by Daniela Montana, is on view through March 1st at Arch Gallery, 1619 SW 13 St., in Miami; open Saturdays and Sundays from 1:30-5:30 p.m. or by appointment. For more information, call 305-644-7500, contact info@archgallery.us or log on to archgallery.us.

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Arch Gallery will host “Art Forum: Adrianita Bianco and Marta Estrems,” co-sponsored by the Consulate General of the Republic of Argentina, in Miami on Friday, February 8th at 7 p.m.

Rafael Lopez-Ramos is an art critic, independent curator and visual artist based in Miami.

Article edited by Daniela Montana