Page 28 - Art-Addiction

MarIa Best

1964 born in germany
lives and works in Berlin, germany

Maria Best presents in her recent works an astonishing re-development of established art forms. sculp-
ture, painting and photography converge in controversial and dynamic image compositions.
The amorphous creatures of the series „beings“ recall sculptures of Henry Moore or Max Bill. The striving
for abstraction, the independence of forms and binding of visual energies, essential to both artists, are pre-
vailing aspects in the poetic and provocative imageries of Maria Best. she creates living and moving spaces,
eliciting feelings of isolation and desire, grief and lust in the observer - revealing the boundlessness of space.
The minimalistic pictures are reminiscent of american expressionists like ellsworth Kelly or georgia
O`Keeffe as well as european land art artists like richard Long or Francisco Infante. But this describes only one
stimulus in her work. The other aspect, more emotional and deeper, relates Maria Best with the three dimen-
sional metaphors of Alberto giacometti, germaine richier or Louise Bourgeois, whose partly contorted, partly
biomorphic sculptures play with our reception of space.
In the „passants“ series, sculptural characters are shifting through daring, futuristic worlds. In episodic
snapshots, these timid and powerful creatures suggest sensations of future and dream, escape and finiteness.
The cosmic aspect is essential in the art of Maria Best: The portrayal of boundlessness, always linked to exis-
tence and experience, self-consciousness and self-completion.
Maria Best has taken her former plastic works to a sculptural climax. she details the fact, that space is
not only firmly associated with figure, but that figure itself creates space.
The result is a fascinating interplay of sculptural, painting and photographic perspectives, a visionary gaze
on spatial, temporal and emotional contexts, which evokes in the spectator an atmosphere of real and irrational
sensations. (COrneLIA LAWrenz, Ph.D. art history, Berlin)

BEINGs #6, 2001 c-Print, diAsec 34 x 60 cM. / 13½ x 23½ in. 
BEINGs #4, 2001 c-Print, diAsec 34 x 60 cM. / 13½ x 23½ in. 
 passaNTs #4, 2002 eMotionscAPe series, c-Print, diAsec 60 x 240 cM. / 23½ x 94½ in.
COurtesy OF ulriKe adler and Maria best, gallery bigart.de

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