MARA MATTUSCHKA – TWIST

8. 11. 2023 – 14. 1. 2024

Opening: November 8, 7-9 pm

Welcome: Hans Knoll
In conversation with Mara Mattuschka: Chris Zintzen
(cultural scientist, Vienna, https://bit.ly/Publikationen_Zintzen)

fotos copyright / courtesy Knoll Galerie Wien + artist


Mara Mattuschka interviews Mara Mattuschka, on the occasion of the exhibition "Twist", at Galerie Knoll, November 2023.

I: Why "Twist"?
MM: Among other things, twist means "surprising turn". After so many years of painting it happened to me that my way of painting suddenly and spontaneously changed, that surprised me.
I: How do you explain that?
MM: It certainly has to do with the wide fan brush. I recently discovered it for myself. It does what it wants, it's almost impossible to guide.
I: I see. For this your figures seem quite congruent, almost realistic.
MM: This brush with its fanned out hair produces lots of lines of regret. There is always a line that points the way to the believable.
I: This figure is also in a "twist", isn't it? It seems to be twisting around her own axis.
MM: Or the viewer circles around it.
I: And there is nothing around it?
MM: Only vibrating ether and desert sand. The figure is, so to speak, out of context. It is its own context.
I: In the spectrum of the diversity of its metamorphoses, the body sometimes appears powerful, or embryonic?
MM: Sometimes taken, or also stoically centred. Human and animal at the same time. The body is an immediate presence that needs no language.
I: Without language - is one still human?
MM: Language has to be stopped so that the world can change again. Painting helps.
I: Without language, doesn't one become like... blind?
MM: I often have the feeling that I paint without eyes. When the painting should be very intense, that is.
I: Is the intensity still bearable in this state?
MM: Well, in such a case, intensity would have to be regarded as content rather than degree.
I: Speechless, then. Nevertheless, an urge to communicate oneself can be read in the paintings. They want to communicate something to us, it seems to me.
MM: Hm, yes, paintings hold secrets.
I: But you know their secret?
MM: I think everyone can discover their own secret in them. A picture and a viewer are a unity that never repeats itself.
I: And you didn't consciously put the secret into it?   
MM: No, paintings have a life of their own, independent of me.
I: When they are finished, or from the beginning?
MM: Almost from the beginning. I brush around until the painting shows me what it needs.
I: The picture takes control away from you?
MM: Exactly. And it's good that way. A painting becomes what it wants.
I: Everything seems to float somehow.
MM: Yes. We are all floating. It's a queasy feeling - to feel that you are floating in the middle of ignorance, but that you are not the middle of this ignorance.