Page 64 - Genius

Maria eugenia akel
lives and works in Santiago de Chile, Chile
SEARCH THE ARTIST ONLINE
 VaLDiVia FisHermen, 2010 MIxED MEDIA OvEr DIgITAl PrINT ON CANvAS
40x55 IN. /100x140 CM.
 VaLparaíso VaLDiVia, 2010 MIxED MEDIA OvEr DIgITAl PrINT ON CANvAS
40x55 IN. /100x140 CM.
www.mariaeugeniaakel.cl
The first time that I saw Maria Eugenia Akel’s Art Work at the 7th
edition of the biennial of Contemporary Art in Florence, it took
me backwards in time through the unmanageable germany of the
early 20’s, where John Hearfield, raoul Hausmann and Hannah Höch
worked together on the first sample of the Dadaist Collective on
1920. The interests of the little group of artists were to prove that
Art could be a dummy game. -Die kunst ist tot- or that the image
that shows each of their moves transforms itself in a ideological
monster of multiple possibilities.
The fact that Maria Eugenia Akel relates with images of different
contexts, like did the group mention above, it make me know
that the real value of her work is not settled in a contemplative
manifestation, but it projects a live matter that is capable to
transcend its iconic nature and overflow a continuous of improvised
realities that Maria Eugenia Akel captures of the same form that
she develops a precise exercise motivated from its capacity of
represent, to show superfluous and extract its own nature, which
Heidegger calls “the World and life”.
Promotes in Maria Eugenia Akel the possibility of transcend her
own way of life and extend it to a plain reality facing a relativity-
morphed society usually dominated by a unique contextual reality.
In contemporary artists like Sophie Calle, Cheril Donegal, Pipilotti
rist, or Tracy Emin this contextual reality transforms itself in an
aesthetic vehicle that combines in transcendent aspects extracted
from the daily things, eluding the high culture lineal establishment
through the deconstruction of the thoughts and the capacity of
divide reality in different layers, like raoul Hausmman demands.
I am convinced that the motivations of Maria Eugenia Akel awake in
the spectator transcend its iconographic length and its perceptive
capacity taking him to face his own memory, like did Candida Höfer
and Jeff Wall in the 80’s.
Akel provides a vision of the positional reality, where the importance
of the image shows its disconcerting side that depends on harmony
between hideous and imperceptible: worn posters, ruined buildings,
smoking men, always in a position and a perception of reality
that collides with the aesthetic indications that Nelson goodman
talked about, about all that goes beyond contemplative in front an
uncertain corps: Time.
"The Quiromantic Tranquility of the Empty Spaces (A reflection
about the image and representational quality of Maria Eugenia
Akel’s Art Work)" by
Juan Carlos Martínez Manzano, Art Critic, Málaga Foundation
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