Art in Conversation with Mariana Gordan
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Sculpture is my first language in the realm of Art. I actually speak volumes in sculpture language; convex volumes. A convex volume is a flat surface pushed outward by the spirit within.
I have distilled six thousand years of sculpture history through my personal experience to produce my portraits. The result is authentic even when viewed in context with similar sculpture like the Etruscan, Romanesque, etc or find similarities with extremely contrasting styles like Brancusi’s highly polished abstract sculpture. What do these diametrically different works have in common? Convexity; volumes pregnant with spirit … spirit and matter.
The purpose of language and art is communication. To me, to express my truth, so distilled… that it could double for anybody’s truth. Enjoy your discovery.
Mariana Gordan
MARIANA GORDAN
Visual Artist | United Kingdom
Artist Statement
I am shallow, I mean superficial like the surface of a mirror; my only depth is defined by what I see.
Reflecting the Universe leaves me as I am, without substance, so by making sculpture I materialize myself through looking at others;but how? as there would be a difference between “reflecting” and “observing” and between “seeing” and “understanding” even if I was looking at a static picture, which is only a theoretical possibility; in reality nothing is fixed, everything is changing according to the law of causality; even my observation is causing it to change; it can`t be proved otherwise; I could not see what happens to what I do not observe; the only clue I have about the unseen is intuition and experience/experiment.
This has ignited my early interest in the relationship, if any, between the inner and the outer of the human face, and later in the X Ray; after years of observation I have a nagging feeling that I was barking-up the wrong tree; now I’m looking at the asymmetry between the image and it`s mirror-reflection and the asymmetry between left and right. The light beam which hits the mirror is not identical with the light reflected back ; I know that because I don`t recognize what I see in the mirror as corresponding to what I feel; or, is it just me?
To my amazement, when they would look at my drawings of them, all my portrait-sitters, without exception, would say :
-“…I recognize myself, but it`s not what I see in the mirror”
-“that is probably because you asked me not to draw your double-chin and your wrinkles“! I`d say.
But if it`s not their physiognomy, what else is there to be recognised ? ; they are looking at a smudge of chalk, undefined lines and shapeless surfaces put together with apparent ease and they “recognise” something which they have never seen before.
What is this?
No Science just feeling. ‘No Art Just Sign’.
Mariana Gordan