Hildegard Von Bingen, Libro de Scivias, Alma y cuerpo, detalle de su concepción

Sarrauteís work inspires the viewer to travel within, to the subtile realms, to the place where reality is created trough Alchemy. This can be mis≠construed and seen us passive or evasive, but for her this interior vision is the basis of actual, effective action. How she conceives of a her work is that it is an aesthetic trap that attempts to bring the viewer to the hermetic and subtle.

 

El Gran Vidrio, Marcel Duchamp (1946)

The unfinished serie ìEl Voyeur Visionarioî, is a group of large paintings, where the artist revisits the way of seeing of Marcel Duchamp. In this series Sarraute proposes a voyeuristic spectator, but with interior vision, a soul being, or soul of a visionary, a spectator with double vision, the physical, and that of the soul.

The artist in her search to place the hermetic content in her work, is interested in the hermetic side of Duchamp: which proposes that a viewer will provide the keys to that appears to be an exuberant, intellectual distraction. But he shows very little of the hermetical keys as they are hidden behind a powerful mental game. With this mental game he entertains the intellectual viewer in a sensual way and keeps him happy.

In this series the artist asks where to put the observer in the work, because this is the key to access the area where the symbols are created ì a place not of the earth, not of the skyî as Henric Corbin expressed it.

In this serie the Pop attitude is more apparent, in the Visionary Voyeur, Sarraute shows this spacewhere the image becomes transparent and where spontaneously flourish the Symbol ìGarden Imaginalisî: the intermediate space where spirits incarnate and bodies spiritualize, the place where Vision ensues.

“The “Inner eye”, the “visionary soul” had a long tradition in the painting History, that Mariana talks in her statement.
It is the same subject that we can found represented in the medieval miniatures by the mysticism Hildegard Von Bingen – and that they has been and important study subject for Mariana since long time. ( About that it is possible to see an interesting conference by Victoria Cirlot, and specialist about this theme http://www.arsgravis.com/?p=5034). This references takes form and are repeated insistently in Mariana’s paintings in its graphical form keeping the woodcut style (in the New, 2015 o Voyeurs , 2014 and voyeurs 2, 2016) or in more abstract way to become visible, like an electric spark: when the stroke bush becomes more vapoury or the spray draw not an exactly form but something different to a line or a direction. (…) There are reason for this form interruption, that talks about the time but not of the time of the painting. Some times the information it is like a thunder, and it is received with the speed of the electricity, and to bring this to the painting it is question of disciplina: in the picassian sentence that the inspiration catch me working.

Mural del Románico Catalán de Santa Maria de Taüll – MNAC Barcelona – Angel con múltiples ojos

II. The X ray and the radioactivity
This paintings are in esencial transparent and flour, talking about the atmosphere and the color. The The phosphorescence of materia, its radioacivity, are related at the same time with the miraculous nakedness of vision. That is, with transparency. Mariana materialize this concept giving a lot of importance – respecting all that it is possible – the whiteness background of the canvas.
(The transparence, the undress of the woman (the marieé by Duchamp) and the whiteness of the paining support are a theme in the history of the paining).

There are a main roll shared by the whiteness of the canvas and by the shiny pearl color that it is vey characteristic in Sarraute’s work since long times, and that we can find in other series. The reflective feature strengthen the interactive quality with the espectator in the surroundings of the painting. It is like the Voyeur that if change the position of the eye could find other differents nuances of the scene, like looking at a mirror.

Juegan un papel protagonista tanto la blancura del propio soporte —la tela— como el de ese nácar brillante que es característico de los trabajos de Sarraute desde hace años y que hemos podido ver en otras series. Su propiedad reflectante refuerza el aspecto interactivo que ya hemos resaltado que recibe el espectador, pero alrededor del cuadro. Como un voyeur varía la posición de su ojo en la mirilla para obtener otros matices de la escena —de rayos— x, se mueve el mirón por estos cuadros, como ante un espejo, paseándose de forma intuitiva por el simple efecto que el brillo proporciona a los cuadros: las formas se transmutan dependiendo del punto de vista.
Adquieren una particular intensidad fosforescente los limas y verdes: por su naturaleza transparente encarnan a la perfección la semicorporeidad que es capaz de adoptar la pintura cuando se la trabaja como un líquido. Mariana convierte aquí otro gaje del oficio (la transparencia de los amarillos imposibles de hacerlos resplandecer sin un blanco tras de sí) en un jalón de su gramática pictórica.

 

Étant donnés, Marcel Duchamp (1946)