Thirsting for the absolute
In order to pin down Marcos-González’ painting, as exacting as profound, it must be considered in that spiritual dimension which breathes in some authors’ works, and which as a leitmotiv, sometimes not too obvious, appears in contemporary art, as artists themselves and some masterminds have avowed. And so, Tapies mentions Kandinsky, Mondrian, Malevich, Klee, or Joan MIró, but also Pollock, Rothko, Beuys or Rainer, as examples of artists which have always kept in mind the spiritual dimension.
From a formal point of view, Marcos-González’ work shows a geometric build up of the spaces with an ordaining criterion, a limitation of the chromatic range, even if often there appears some stridency, and an emphasis on the material – essential to tangibly assess its spirituality – by means of a method she invented: previously oxidizing the canvas, thereby securing the cooperation of the action of time and of luck, besides that of the outer reality. This formal language is the vehicle for the expression of an inner world, full of tensions and sensitiveness, which solves in a plastic way the balance between opposites and the will to control chaos, in an effort to improve herself, proposing a given resistance nucleus to a senseless life.
Her homage to Goya’s “The dream of reason”, a major work, very elaborate and with rich nuances, seduces because of its unfathomable depth, because, as with fire and the sea, our sight is never tired of contemplating it. The monochromes series in ochre and black reaches its highest concretion and purity: canvases such as “Night warrior”, “Galactic warrior”, or “Moon messenger”, where she seems as if she were trying to follow Paul Klee, making visible the invisible, as it is confirmed by a canvas called literally “The visibility of the invisible”.
When you enter the showroom you feel as if you were penetrating in a room strangely full of spirituality, which inspires stillness and leads to meditation. This shows once more that art is not a way of writing or painting, but rather the most intimate expression of the intenseness of the self.
Marcos-González prepares each work unhurriedly, considering all her options until she finds the one which satisfies her fully, to condensate in the limited space of the canvas, or in a sculpture, the whole of what she wants to convey, and which is the result of her reflexion and of her quietness. For this reason, it is surprising to find works which induce meditation together with others in which irony and humour prevail, as in the “Altarpiece of the creation”, or l’objet trouvé “The good exterminator”.
According to Gloria Bosch – which made a good choice when organizing this exhibition - Marcos-González spends many months in her workshop alone with her work, trying to solve a subject, an idea, in her long battle “which brings together the most incidental with the necessary transformation, creating day by day the secret tale which we all carry within.” It seems as if spirituality is a rare and scarce quality in present day painting. However, some say that there is such a “thirst for the absolute” that the 21st century will be the one which finally will be able to recover again the identity that today’s man seems to have lost.
The observation of an inner life places Marcos-González’ work in a plane in the future.
MARÍA LUISA BORRÀS. Art critic for “La Vanguardia”. May 1996. Exhibition in the Caixa de Pensions at Girona.
MARIA LLUïSA BORRÀS, Art critic for “La Vanguardia”.
May 1996. Exhibition in the Caixa de Pensions at Girona.
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