Transparency, Reflection, and Colour
Exhibition text by Martin Fox, art historian, writer, and editor at PACE Gallery, 2016Transparency, Reflection, and Colour
Centre for Art and Architecture Affairs (CAAA)
Marisa Ferreira’s colourful art invites us to view actively, to move around, to be aware of our looking. As individual works of art and as an ensemble, they encourage participatory aesthetic experiences rather than passive ones, transforming our understanding by encouraging active vision, movement, and thought. Her project, she states, “becomes not how to understand space, but rather how to make oneself open enough to perceive it.”
Since its origins, abstraction has enabled the development of art based on the understanding of human perception, and in turn the creation of works that may extend that understanding. Artists exploring these possibilities are inspired by research in human physiology and psychology, but also by intuition and a phenomenological attention to sight and engagement with space. Ferreira’s art also embraces aesthetic
beauty and invites emotional responses.
Transparency, Reflection and Colour includes works from multiple series. The first, Notes on colour and form are acrylic paintings on board. These are explorations of the possibilities of composition and interactions of colour. Looking within and between works, we are prompted to challenge our perceptions and consider gestalt principles including proportion, harmony, movement, and balance.
The Expanded series continue Ferreira’s explorations into three-dimensional space, and function between painting and sculpture. Consisting of lacquered metal plates, these works are both systematic and exuberant. Relating to their environment, the coloured planes of the Expanded series are composed in three-dimensional depth, catching light and shadow and arranging colour and form in surprising ways.
Ferreira makes the Folds series from stainless steel plates bent into geometric forms, combining two- and three-dimensional shapes. Each raised to a height of 1.7 meters, the Folds are partially painted in primary colours, with sections of the mirrored stainless steel reflecting the surrounding space and viewers, and dissolving borders between artwork and observer. She also creates metal drawings with thin steel tubes which articulate space and are painted in a single colour.
The final series includes two large-scale works: Chromatic Symphony and Asymmetric compositions. Each is constructed from sheets of aluminium bent into regular angles across its entire length, then painted in acrylic with saturated, prismatic colours and patterns. These shaped supports mean that each work is a single composition, but one that cannot be seen in its entirety from any one viewpoint. Instead, they change in appearance continuously, based on the viewer’s active looking and movement. What do you see?
