Rebus + Diversions
by Adriana Herrera
Art Nexus, No. 105, June - August 2017
Rebus + Diversions, the title of the exhibition by María Martínez-Cañas, operates as an entry key to the remarkable group of assemblages created by this Cuban-Born Puerto Rican artist with the support of the Pollock-Krasner Grant. In this series, the tireless experimenter, a master of conceptual photography, reached a place where the rigorous knowledge of that medium and the freedom to reinvent. In this manner Martínez-Cañas incorporates an enormous amount of materials and techniques in order to build three-dimensional artifacts that expand an intimate memory of the history of Cuban and international modernism and the very vision and perception processes.
The word rebus, which meaning includes terms like enigma, puzzle, and riddle, comes from the Latin "res," thing, and is defined as "a sort of puzzle constructed with words, images, or symbols whose names sound like the parts of syllables from a word or phrase. The works are clearly not a literal rebus, but rather a sophisticated divertimento, a complex display of memorabilia in the form of a photograph-based quasi installation series that incorporates fragments from visual archives, drawings, cords, metal threads, and industrial patterns to construct three-dimensional pieces that reflect the progression of a unique and formal development process.
From work number 1 to 20, there is a sort of progression of techniques and mechanisms that allow following a play of superimpositions of added materials for the construction of pieces that gradually acquire greater complexity and sophistication.
In fact, beginning with the piece Untitled 001, an assembly fashioned with old portraits and floating newspaper cut-outs (with images like that of Tina Modotti's face, or the news about the 1944 exhibition of Cuban modernists at the MoMA, "signed" by the person who actually conceived it: the then director Alfred H. Barr), Martínez-Cañas reaches the complex and magnificent visual mechanism found in Untitled 020.
Rebus + Diversions, Link to series
That piece, the last to be assembled, includes miniature sculptural forms created with wood, metal and wire that allude to pivotal moments of modernism, architectural records, shadow - producing curved pieces of paper, and a group of abstract photographic experimentations - including the film-frame technique that does not require a camera for the construction of images, but rather relies on the play between light and the objects exposed on photosensitive papers that change tones during the duration of the exhibition; and, in synthesis, a magnificent series of gears, like small vision machines that evoke the Light – Space - Modulator created in 1930 by László Moholy-Nagy, whose presence in the series is tutelary.
"Every object, every material, represented a possibility," says Martínez-Cañas referring to the way in which she incorporated "things" that reacted to light in different ways to make the images appear. As a whole, the series, constructed over a photographed grey background, and the photographic image of papers that act as a second surface, at some level work as an artifact of juxtaposed memories that contain biographical allusions and self-referential moments associated with her formative and creative process. But the series also functions as a device to reproduce, alter, and activate stories from the history of Cuban art, as well as the foundational figures of modernity in Europe and North America.
A good part of the material comes from the archives of Jose Gómez-Sicre. Martínez-Cañas' father, art dealer Jose Martínez-Cañas, acquired the archives as a present for his daughter. In the text of the catalog, Manuel E. González acknowledges the guiding role of that material, and reveals that the process of immersion in the archives was a central part of the artist's process. Furthermore, González delved into the fascination that Gomez-Sicre felt for Henry Moore, and Martínez-Cañas "renovated" Moore's sense of what is possible." Images of Moore's sculptures appear in several works from the series including Untitled 006. But the first ten pieces give priority to the evocation of artists like Cundo Bermúdez or Mario Carreño, figures that were as familiar during her adolescence and formative years as they were central for the development of a narrative of the art from Cuba.
These first ten "Rebus + Diversions" - a term that in addition to evoking the divertimento and freedom with which the series was approached, also offers the possibility of multiplying the versions and the tacit allusion to the subversion of limits - are constructed with fragments from photographed papers: works, letters, exhibitions, as well as influences and events that were decisive for the art of the island. Beginning with the beautiful piece Untitled 011 - in which the home of Walter Gropius is intervened with a tree - forms created with balsa wood are introduced and three-dimensionality is increased with resources like cords and wires. The assembly with threads and forms in the erotic collage Untitled 012, a tribute to Agustín Fernández, is a beautiful allusion to the affective memory that connects biographical and art history elements. The last seven rebus increase the creative intensity, not only because of the type of referential appropriations and materials, but also as a result of the artistic bravado that places Martínez-Cañas in her role of favorite student of László Moholy-Nagy. It is as if, through her own artistic leap, Martínez-Cañas embodied the transformation that sparked the Hungarian teacher's influence and championing of the New Bauhaus in the art of North America. With this series, she has answered Moholy-Nagy's challenge to "think about the history of art and to reproduce old formulas and experiment with a vision that stretches the human ability to face new tasks."
Adriana Herrera © 2017
by Adriana Herrera
Art Nexus, No. 105, June - August 2017
Rebus + Diversions, the title of the exhibition by María Martínez-Cañas, operates as an entry key to the remarkable group of assemblages created by this Cuban-Born Puerto Rican artist with the support of the Pollock-Krasner Grant. In this series, the tireless experimenter, a master of conceptual photography, reached a place where the rigorous knowledge of that medium and the freedom to reinvent. In this manner Martínez-Cañas incorporates an enormous amount of materials and techniques in order to build three-dimensional artifacts that expand an intimate memory of the history of Cuban and international modernism and the very vision and perception processes.
The word rebus, which meaning includes terms like enigma, puzzle, and riddle, comes from the Latin "res," thing, and is defined as "a sort of puzzle constructed with words, images, or symbols whose names sound like the parts of syllables from a word or phrase. The works are clearly not a literal rebus, but rather a sophisticated divertimento, a complex display of memorabilia in the form of a photograph-based quasi installation series that incorporates fragments from visual archives, drawings, cords, metal threads, and industrial patterns to construct three-dimensional pieces that reflect the progression of a unique and formal development process.
From work number 1 to 20, there is a sort of progression of techniques and mechanisms that allow following a play of superimpositions of added materials for the construction of pieces that gradually acquire greater complexity and sophistication.
In fact, beginning with the piece Untitled 001, an assembly fashioned with old portraits and floating newspaper cut-outs (with images like that of Tina Modotti's face, or the news about the 1944 exhibition of Cuban modernists at the MoMA, "signed" by the person who actually conceived it: the then director Alfred H. Barr), Martínez-Cañas reaches the complex and magnificent visual mechanism found in Untitled 020.
Rebus + Diversions, Link to series
That piece, the last to be assembled, includes miniature sculptural forms created with wood, metal and wire that allude to pivotal moments of modernism, architectural records, shadow - producing curved pieces of paper, and a group of abstract photographic experimentations - including the film-frame technique that does not require a camera for the construction of images, but rather relies on the play between light and the objects exposed on photosensitive papers that change tones during the duration of the exhibition; and, in synthesis, a magnificent series of gears, like small vision machines that evoke the Light – Space - Modulator created in 1930 by László Moholy-Nagy, whose presence in the series is tutelary.
"Every object, every material, represented a possibility," says Martínez-Cañas referring to the way in which she incorporated "things" that reacted to light in different ways to make the images appear. As a whole, the series, constructed over a photographed grey background, and the photographic image of papers that act as a second surface, at some level work as an artifact of juxtaposed memories that contain biographical allusions and self-referential moments associated with her formative and creative process. But the series also functions as a device to reproduce, alter, and activate stories from the history of Cuban art, as well as the foundational figures of modernity in Europe and North America.
A good part of the material comes from the archives of Jose Gómez-Sicre. Martínez-Cañas' father, art dealer Jose Martínez-Cañas, acquired the archives as a present for his daughter. In the text of the catalog, Manuel E. González acknowledges the guiding role of that material, and reveals that the process of immersion in the archives was a central part of the artist's process. Furthermore, González delved into the fascination that Gomez-Sicre felt for Henry Moore, and Martínez-Cañas "renovated" Moore's sense of what is possible." Images of Moore's sculptures appear in several works from the series including Untitled 006. But the first ten pieces give priority to the evocation of artists like Cundo Bermúdez or Mario Carreño, figures that were as familiar during her adolescence and formative years as they were central for the development of a narrative of the art from Cuba.
These first ten "Rebus + Diversions" - a term that in addition to evoking the divertimento and freedom with which the series was approached, also offers the possibility of multiplying the versions and the tacit allusion to the subversion of limits - are constructed with fragments from photographed papers: works, letters, exhibitions, as well as influences and events that were decisive for the art of the island. Beginning with the beautiful piece Untitled 011 - in which the home of Walter Gropius is intervened with a tree - forms created with balsa wood are introduced and three-dimensionality is increased with resources like cords and wires. The assembly with threads and forms in the erotic collage Untitled 012, a tribute to Agustín Fernández, is a beautiful allusion to the affective memory that connects biographical and art history elements. The last seven rebus increase the creative intensity, not only because of the type of referential appropriations and materials, but also as a result of the artistic bravado that places Martínez-Cañas in her role of favorite student of László Moholy-Nagy. It is as if, through her own artistic leap, Martínez-Cañas embodied the transformation that sparked the Hungarian teacher's influence and championing of the New Bauhaus in the art of North America. With this series, she has answered Moholy-Nagy's challenge to "think about the history of art and to reproduce old formulas and experiment with a vision that stretches the human ability to face new tasks."
Adriana Herrera © 2017
