The new oil paintings and watercolors by Mercedes Mangrané focus on the different rhythms of materiality in a state of dissolution. Pastose, relief-like surfaces in gently graded oil colors articulate shifting intensities within the pictorial but also allow for an overflow in the materiality of oil painting. These works explore the grooves and traces that both compose and fracture the image, uniting and separating color and space. Juxtaposed with the watercolors, their material intensity comes to the fore and resonates with the delicate shadows of the human figures presented in the drawings. Here, too, the fight against the excess and the reduction of color saturation mark the process of their creation and emphasize the impact of the materiality on the processual appearance of an image. Mangrané points to the shadow as the origin of figurative representation but keeps it in a space of transition – a silhouette that appears from the realm of color, only to disappear again.
Excerpt from the curatorial text by Vanessa Joan Müller.
Pictures by Kunst-dokumentation
Courtesy of Georg Kargl Fine Arts.