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Maria Cioată, Between Visual Sign and Revealing Metaphor

No.1 / April 2019

Mihai Plămădeală, art critic – article published on Lettre Internationale, no.109/2019.

 

Through Maria Cioată, the visual sign transcends the waiting horizon of the viewer in relation to the used resources. In the configuration sessions of her works, the artist always uses allegory as an ally, starting from some well-defined volumetric ensembles, with development potential, which she does not create to present as such, in the idea of “ceramics for ceramics”, but related to the ideas that accompany them. Visual solutions are suggested to her either by the physio-chemical properties of the materials or by those with so-called aesthetic value, such as texture, color, consistency and so on, but the constitutive reasons are immaterial in nature.

The morphological language of the artist involves the choices, not only those regarding the environment in which she expresses herself, but also about the work variants. In an extremely palpable field, that of ceramics, in which the energy necessary for modeling is transmitted directly through the fingers, the artist creates images, of course, three-dimensional, rather than objects declared aesthetical, be they spectacular, unique or surprising. The works thus made are eclectic, without being experimental. The experimental part is strictly about burning, a process that always offers surprises and not always pleasant ones. The relations between randomness and artistic will are the expression of the continuity between the initially imagined forms, then “caught” in artworks. These involve not only the joining, for example, porcelain with paper, metal wires or natural feathers, but also the absorption of light, the determination of space or the extension in the shadows. Introspection holds weight in the act of creation.

Beyond the refinement of the execution, the definition of the space through concise visual landmarks becomes a stake of the ensembles made by the artist. She constantly seeks to vectorially extend the physical boundaries beyond the actual art pieces and to direct them to the area of imagination or verbalization, taking into account the iconographic sources, often legible or stated by titles. The context of the projects is implicitly symbolic. The decorative is also part of the visual discourse, the meticulous realization of the individual works being able to reach the preciousness, without this interfering with the transmitted message however.

Maria Cioată starts in her artistic work from metaphor, leaving a generous place to the possible changes that can occur during the technological process and to the adaptation to the exhibition spaces. Her works, most often modular, are approached as matrix, the components being arranged in interchangeable networks. Maria’s pieces are signs rather than objects, in the sense that the sign is more important than its material transposition, regardless of the chosen environment.

Notions, ideas, qualities or feelings find surprising forms, based on analogical correspondences. An important stylistic mark is the relationship between full and empty, the latter having a fundamental role, not only in the emphasis, but also in the general economy of the created ensembles. In other words, the living space of the works themselves is assigned to them, without being included.

At the morphological level, Maria Cioată’s ceramics masterfully expresses the compatibility of physics with artistic intentions. Ingenious and surprising, her artworks seduce by refinement, discretion, coherence and last but not least, by the sense of measure. The artist knows not only how, but especially when and where to stop. Its porcelain structures, both compact, centripetal and fluid, often perforated, meet with metal bolters or volutes, in games of light and shadows, always with an active role in compositions. Beyond the intuitive, technical, or decorative aspects, however, we are dealing with a particular form of interrogation regarding the finite and the eternal. A philosophical investigation into the mysterious nature of the banal and the accessible familiar.

Every artist wants to be recognized by her/his creation, not by reading her/his signature or label. The distinctive sign of the artistic work undertaken by Maria Cioată is the special relationship with the chosen materials, never randomly, always put at the service of the whole. This premise has animistic connotations. The use of porcelain or tiles together with metal, sometimes also with wood, is part of a unifying personal logic. The artworks, through their development solutions, are determined not so much by the physical properties of the constituent substances, but by the transposition of the original ideas into concrete visual forms.

The exhibition Ascension, at the Galateea Gallery in Bucharest, in 2015, was a defining step for Maria Cioată, who went from the sculptural-ceramics on which she focused since the ’90s, to the installations through which she became known and recognized on national and international level.

Whether they are exposed parietally or in ronde-bosse, the works-installations within the project Ascension open the perspective by enhancing the vertical accents. These are counterbalanced by multiradial horizons, which suggest the idea of non-finite. Ascension and flight are the reading keys to the series of works I am referring to, to which light can be added. The mentioned landmarks play a fundamental role in the act of creation, the ceramic fragments used in the proposed networks being subsumed according to algorithms of minimalist origin.

The parts of the networks know various forms, all loaded with meanings. The feathers, as they are manufactured and arranged, send not so much to birds or flight, but rather to the unseen world. The presence of the angel is suggested, without this taking on a greater weight than would be the case. To continue the reasoning, the rectangular fragments can be assimilated to the mosaic, used in liturgical representations, but also an attribute of diversity.

Due to the specific gravity, the ceramic pieces are a hypostasis of stability. However, being organized according to gravitational morphological reasons, the works suggest the ascent also due to the visual vectors, the density of fragments and the chromatic values. The horizontal expansion is marked by a wooden beam used as a hanging support, part of the “roof of the world”, or, why not, a semantron. Due to its elastic properties, the steel wire allows pendulum, assimilated to horizontal flight. The balance sums up the paradox of being and not being at the same time in a certain position, but without the possibility of transcending the given coordinates.

In an enumerative logic, the works presuppose the idea of detachment, which is not fully synonymous with rise, that of flight, in other words of kinetic privilege and, finally, that of ascension, seen as transcendence.

Two of the artist’s main themes, Androgyne and Genesis, are periodically interpreted in various ways. Angelological doctrines complete the sketched thematic picture. The exhibition project Genesis, from 2019, materialized in an exhibition at Galateca Gallery, develops a theme initiated on the occasion of the Florence Biennale of Contemporary Art in 2017, where the artist also won the Lorenzo Il Magnifico Gold Medal.

 

Maria Cioată - Florence Biennale Award for Art 2017 – The ‘Lorenzo il Magnifico’ International Award
Maria Cioată – Florence Biennale Award for Art 2017 – The ‘Lorenzo il Magnifico’ International Award

 

Porcelain or papier-mâché hemispheres of varying sizes, inscribed in each other, spaced by loops, have been configured in a true Bauhaus logic. The visual spectacle was completed by the use of hundreds of natural feathers, suspended in the network in the space between the works, strung vertically on metal wires.

 

Mihai Plămădeală and Maria Cioată - Florence Biennale 2017
Mihai Plămădeală and Maria Cioată – Florence Biennale 2017

 

In the 2018 exhibition project, Warm / Cold, the wire volutes were replaced with bamboo trunks, in the same intention of relating the full with the empty, the massive with the fragile, all hidden in the ceramic walls of a labyrinth. The labyrinth, respectively its ordeal, to paraphrase the title of Mircea Eliade’s book, represents a distinct direction in the artist’s creation, whose family of forms aims in principle at space expansion and opening, not delimitations, routes and controlled limitation of access or visual axes. The rhythm, the alternation, the vibration and the junction of the mineral and vegetable kingdoms are the reading keys of the installation, treated equally as a wall, an architectural ensemble and a chromatic support. Bamboo ornaments and axes, beyond their aesthetic valences, counterbalance the feeling of massiveness and opacity. Finally, the labyrinth is not made in its entirety, but only suggested. Through the drawn visual lines, the artist wants to suggest the way, the search, the wandering, the hope. Meditating on the topic is equivalent, in the proposed analog system, to initiation itself.

For Maria Cioată, all the elements of the world are part of a large (magical) fabric. Invisible connections are suggested plastically by associating bodies, sometimes ceramic, sometimes not, with wire or bolter. Beyond the implicit visual effects, light filtering and dispersion are part of her artistic language.

The alternation of positive and negative volumes highlights the complementarity, but also the potential difference between the parts of a whole. The relations between interior and exterior are marked not only by the concave and convex structures, designed to be read from both perspectives, but also by the organization in the form of a puzzle of surfaces, with the missing pieces gravitating in suspension around their intended places. The mental completion of the whole, as a stylistic innovation, can bring aesthetic satisfactions in itself, without this aspect being at stake in the artistic discourse. Most of the artworks, unless explicitly made as installations or diptychs, have network structures or are intended to be recontextualized by exposure. We are dealing with proposals for configuring the space.

Although the forms live visually by themselves, the iconological dimension still prevails. The female torso, for example, I’m referring to the project Ia, from 2017, is seen at the same time as a traditional piece of clothing, a dogmatic egg and a sleeping muse. The message transmitted revolves around the breath, the life, the soul, in fact the pneuma, not the cultural quote. The idea of the divine spirit that animates the world is found in the entire creation of the artist.

The relations between the environmental and the sculptural, even monumental, are multiple. The common denominator and at the same time the link between the possible classifications is discretion, converted 100% into refinement. Such works, beyond the need to have a space to be displayed with dignity, have the quality of making a space to live, all through implicit aesthetic means. No possible narrative or cultural reference, however pertinent and to the point, can disturb the purely constitutive reasons of Maria’s works.

Last but not least, I notice the thematic and morphological originality. Keeping a safe distance from pottery and sculpture is salutary. The refusal of the natural model or the manufacture of ceramic copies after various objects, in the name of mastering technical solutions, leads to an independent path, both coherent and original.

Maria Cioată expresses herself fully in projects, carried out over years, or even decades, taking into account that she never considers the chapters she opens to be over. Even though she participated in numerous group exhibitions in the country and abroad with unique pieces, they were conceived in relation to the meditation themes that fueled the great projects. An exhibition of Maria always looks in a certain way, in the sense that nothing is left to chance, from the general structure, order of the pieces, route, lighting, ambient elements, soundtrack and down to the smallest detail. Everything is neat, meticulous, controlled, that is, related to what she wants to achieve as a general visual effect and to what she is trying to convey, beyond what is visible.

The artist’s pieces or installations are extremely versatile, in the sense that they can adapt to the most particular spaces, without losing their identity. It also masterfully withstands the most difficult museographic challenge: joining with other pieces (by different artists). At the International Biennale in Florence, the participating artists, around five hundred out of over six thousand applicants, did not have the opportunity to choose their place or “neighbors”. In this context, that is, together with ceramic artists from the Far East and from across the Atlantic, her artwork, Genesis, attracted the attention, not only of the jury, but also of the artists themselves, as well as the general public. The further development of the work (in fact, an installation made in the limit of the cubic meter in which all the participating pieces had to fit) in an exhibition revealed the huge potential of the family of forms proposed on that occasion. The project, not accidentally titled Genesis, did not come out of nowhere; the spark has always existed before. The metaphor of creation is one of the recurring ideas in Maria Cioată’s artistic activity. In his book work, The Genesis of Metaphor and the Meaning of Culture, Lucian Blaga established the categories of visual and revealing metaphors. Paraphrasing, Maria Cioată’s creation oscillates between a visual sign and a revealing metaphor.

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