RoomBa Funky | Marta Ares

For many years, and long before other artists in the argentine art scene, Marta Ares has explored the possibilities of video as a medium which extends beyond the merely visual and notion of space, allowing herself to revel in the mysteries of time and movement, especially those posed by the video installation and expanded video.

She is a pioneer in her field for she has conceived and produced a digital aesthetic not only through computer design and technology but also in the dimension of analogy, where the matter and the manual complement each other regardless, to consolidate a work of art.

The art show “roomBA funky” proposes a euphoric cascade of colorful form which dances on the surface of the painting, the acrylic canvass or the modular screen to produce a powerful energy, an audio-visual and tactile injection of perceivable joy that reaches beyond any concept that transcends our rational cultural baggage, at times based solely on thoughts. This is a place where the organic and the musical blend in harmony and melody.

If our ancestors, prehistoric men, used to collect many and beautiful stones which they placed on the tombs of their dead –their bones painted red- it is because not only the transcendence, but the quest for form, are inherent to man. The 20th Century would develop this idea further, scientifically in the theory of the Gestalt effect which refers to the form-forming capability of our senses, particularly with respect to the visual recognition.

In the work of Marta Ares, sensuality and pleasure overpower the different formats that jump around to the beat of real music. Everything dances, everything moves though it is still, everything resounds despite the silence, just as conceived by Paul Klee, who believed music and painting were indivisible.

Abstract form, almost biological, realistic yet virtual, bring Matisse to mind and are strengthened by the spirit of Mariscal, to name but a couple of her most admired artists. Evoking perhaps beads, candy, amoebas, pompons, polka-dots, sweets, cells, these shapes all inhabit her composition, turning matter into movement, impeding any stillness as they fall, swerve, dance, and slide in an explosion of multi layers of cold and warm color. From James Brown (Hot Pants) to Prince (Kiss) and Laurie Anderson (Sharkey’s Night), Manu Chao (Spring) to the original score by Fabian Kesler (Fluir Devenir, Dia Vida…), the exhibition opens the threshold of diverse and titillating sensorial channels to submerge us in a world of form, rhythm and color that transcend the naked eye, blending and confronting spirit and matter.

.. Graciela Taquini, August 2008. www.gracielataquini.info