Ricardo Mazal | Full Circle

RICARDO MAZAL F U LL

C I R C LE

RICARDO MAZAL F U LL

C I R C LE

F U LL

C I R C LE

Sundaram Tagore is pleased to present an exhibition of richly colorful abstract paintings by acclaimed Mexican artist Ricardo Mazal. Created during the recent closures, this new body of work draws from all his most powerful series of the last twenty years. Mazal skillfully brings the past into the present by taking techniques and elements from earlier works in brand new directions and transforming them in contemporary ways.

When the lockdown went into effect last spring, Mazal had just opened a major solo exhibition at the Centro Cultural EstaciĂłn Indianilla in Mexico City. Mazal and his wife Fabi, who were there for the opening, had to cut their trip short and return home to New Mexico, where they joined their two daughters.

With one daughter just returned from studying abroad and the other soon to leave for university in Berlin, Mazal was thrilled for the uninterrupted time with his family. He felt little motivation to get back into the studio. With all the uncertainty stemming from the pandemic, coupled with the abrupt closing of his new show, he didn’t have the energy or the inclination to stretch canvases, let alone embark on a new body of work.

Left: Ricardo Mazal’s studio, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 2020 5

To overcome his apprehension, Mazal invited his oldest randomly struck a form that embodied the same sense daughter Julia to assist him in the studio. They began by of movement and energy captured in his earlier prayer filming a series of videos chronicling his painting practice flag paintings, Mazal felt quietly excited. He realized starting with his preparatory phase, where he covers the this extraordinary time with no distractions and nowhere walls of his soaring, sun-drenched studio with a new coat to go was providing him with a rare opportunity—a of crisp white paint. It’s a cathartic act that allows him to chance to journey through all his earlier series and mentally shed the previous series and clear his mind for the explore essential elements he’d previously moved on new one. Julia interviewed him during the next phase, as he from because they were so closely associated with a began to compose digital renderings of the compositions particular body of work. that ultimately serve as a blueprint for the paintings.

From the carefully textured geometric forms of his Traditionally, Mazal uses his own photography to create the Prague paintings (2017 – 2019) to the muted purple renderings, as his work is almost always rooted to a specific hue examined in his color study Violeta (2019 – 2020), place, event or experience. In the early 2000s, he embarked these once familiar elements evolved with each new on a decade-long examination of sacred burial rituals that composition Mazal produced. Enjoying the freedom of took him from the tomb of the Red Queen in Palenque, pure experimentation, Mazal immersed himself in the Chiapas, Mexico, to the Peace Forest cemetery in Odenwald, experience. “I could have worked on the renderings Germany, and finally, Mount Kailash, Tibet’s holiest summit. forever,” he recalls. “But I really wanted to share the The billowing prayer flags of Bhutan inspired his next series full process with Julia, I wanted her to see me paint.” and more recently, the Old Jewish Cemetery of Prague, all of Once the compositions were complete, Mazal and Julia which he documented in photographs.

stretched and primed the canvasses together.

With travel now off the table, Mazal lacked the benefit of his Mazal took the sense of freedom and spontaneity he customary creative source. Recognizing he needed to adjust experienced creating the renderings and extended it to his approach, he traveled inward for inspiration. Tapping into his his painting process. He let go of his ordinarily rigorous early years as a graphic designer, Mazal generated hundreds of approach and became more improvisational in his methods. abstract arrangements, exploring color, shape and perspective. For example, instead of completing one or two paintings at a time, as is typical for him, Mazal worked on multiple canvases He began to play with linear elements, bending and twisting at once, applying a single color to each and letting it dry them, as if they were floating and turning in space. When he completely before moving to the next.

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In some of the works, Mazal revisits familiar techniques, but employs them in unexpected ways. For Full Circle K 3, he borrows a painting method from his Kailash series (2011 – 2014), where he applied layers of translucent color with a foam-rubber blade to emulate the mountain’s snow-streaked peaks. Here, he brings this element to the forefront, making it the focus of the work with dynamic, undulated ribbons of deep blue and aubergine that sweep across the surface.

He also developed new techniques for this series. To produce the sinuous elongated forms that arc and bow diagonally across paintings such as Full Circle P 4 and Full Circle P 1, Mazal had to teach himself how to render perfectly curved lines. It was an arduous process, but the experience opened him up to discovering and forming new paths of painting.

The idea of deconstructing elements from previous paintings isn’t wholly new to the artist. If you look closely at his work over the years, you will find vestiges of one series carried over to the next. It is a regenerative and cyclical process that in some ways parallels the spiritual themes Mazal explores in his practice. What distinguishes this body of work is the way Mazal embraced the unpredictability of the moment and transformed his fears and melancholy into the creative source that was missing. As a result, the work is powerful and innovative and imbued with the kind of self-assurance that comes from experience, resilience and clarity of vision.

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Full Circle P 1, 2020, oil on linen, 80 x 123 inches/203.2 x 312.4 cm 8

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Full Circle P 2, 2020, oil on linen, 71 x 86.5 inches/180.3 x 219.7 cm

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Full Circle P 3, 2020, oil on linen, 71 x 86 inches/180.3 x 218.4 cm

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Praga 26, 2020, oil on linen, 40 x 44 inches/101.6 x 111.8 cm 18

Full Circle P 13, 2020, oil on linen, 40 x 44 inches/101.6 x 111.8 cm 19

Full Circle P 14, 2020, oil on linen, 40 x 44 inches/101.6 x 111.8 cm

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Full Circle P 12, 2020, oil on linen, 40 x 44 inches/101.6 x 111.8 cm 22

Full Circle P 16, 2020, oil on linen, 40 x 44 inches/101.6 x 111.8 cm 23

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Full Circle P 6, 2020, oil on linen, 63 x 86 inches/160 x 218.4 cm

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Full Circle P 4, 2020, oil on linen, 66 x 72 inches/167.6 x 182.9 cm

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Full Circle P 8, 2020, oil on linen, 54 x 69 inches/137.2 x 175.3 cm

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Full Circle P 9, 2020, oil on linen, 48 x 64 inches/122 x 162.6 cm

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Full Circle P 5, 2020, oil on linen, 63 x 90 inches/160 x 228.6 cm

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Full Circle P 11, 2020, oil on linen, 48 x 64 inches/122 x 162.6 cm

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Full Circle P 10, 2020, oil on linen, 48 x 64 inches/122 x 162.6 cm

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Full Circle P 17, 2020, oil on linen, 30 x 32 inches/76.2 x 81.3 cm 44

Full Circle P 18, 2020, oil on linen, 30 x 32 inches/76.2 x 81.3 cm 45

Full Circle P 7, 2020, oil on linen, 55 x 70 inches/139.7 x 177.8 cm

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Full Circle K 1, 2020, oil on linen, 63 x 86 inches/160 x 218.4 cm

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Full Circle K 4, 2020, oil on linen, 26 x 27 inches/66 x 68.6 cm 52

Full Circle K 5, 2020, oil on linen, 26 x 26 inches/66 x 66 cm 53

Full Circle K 3, 2020, oil on linen, 54 x 69 inches/137.2 x 175.3 cm

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Full Circle K 2, 2020, oil on linen, 55 x 70 inches/139.7 x 177.8 cm

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Full Circle PF 2, 2020, oil on linen, 30 x 32 inches/76.2 x 81.3 cm 60

Full Circle PF 3, 2020, oil on linen, 30 x 32 inches/76.2 x 81.3 cm 61

Full Circle PF 1, 2020, oil on linen, 48 x 64 inches/122 x 162.6 cm

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R I C A R D O

M A Z A L

Ricardo Mazal was born in Mexico City in 1950. He has exhibited extensively in galleries and museums throughout the Americas, Asia and Europe. Since 2000, he has had fourteen individual museum exhibitions in Mexico and the United States, including five retrospectives of his work at the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Monterrey (2000), the Museo de Arte Moderno de la Ciudad de México (2006), the Museo de Arte de Querétaro (2009), the Museo de Arte Abstracto Manuel Felguerez (2010) and the Center for Contemporary Arts Santa Fe, as well as thematic exhibitions in the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (2006), the Museo Nacional de Antropología (2004 -2005) and the Centro Cultural Estación Indianilla, among others. In 2015 Mazal’s work was included in Frontiers Reimagined, a Collateral Event of the 56th Venice Biennale.

Mazal’s work is included in the permanent collections of The Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minnesota; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Arizona; Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City; Museo de Arte Abstracto Manuel Felguérez, Zacatecas, Mexico; Maeght Foundation, Paris; Centro de las Artes, Monterrey, Mexico; Cirque du Soleil, Montreal; the Peninsula Hotel, Shanghai; and Deutsche Bank, New York and Germany.

Ricardo Mazal divides his time between Santa Fe, New Mexico and New York City.

Left: Ricardo Mazal’s studio, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 2020

SUNDARAM TAGORE GALLERIES We have been representing established and emerging artists from around the world since 2000. We show work that is aesthetically and intellectually rigorous, infused with humanism and art historically significant. We specialize in paintings, drawings, sculptures and installations with a strong emphasis on materiality. Our artists cross cultural and national boundaries, synthesizing Western visual language with forms, techniques and philosophies from Asia, the Subcontinent and the Middle East. We show this work alongside important work by overlooked women from the New York School. The gallery also has a robust photography program that includes some of the world’s most noted photographers.

NEW YORK Chelsea: 547 West 27th Street, New York, NY 10001 • tel 212 677 4520 Madison Avenue: 1100 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10028 • tel 212 288 2889 gallery@sundaramtagore.com

SINGAPORE 5 Lock Road 01-05, Gillman Barracks, Singapore 108933 • tel 65 6694 3378 singapore@sundaramtagore.com

HONG KONG 4/F, 57-59 Hollywood Road, Central, Hong Kong • tel 852 2581 9678 hongkong@sundaramtagore.com President and curator: Sundaram Tagore Senior Director, New York: Susan McCaffrey Director, Singapore: Melanie Taylor Director, New York: Kathryn McSweeney Registrar: Julia Occhiogrosso Designer: Russell Whitehead Editorial support: Kieran Doherty

WWW.SUNDARAMTAGORE.COM Text © 2020 Sundaram Tagore Gallery Photographs © 2020 Ricardo Mazal All rights reserved under international copyright conventions. No part of this catalogue may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Cover: Full Circle P 6, 2020, oil on linen, 63 x 86 inches/160 x 218.4 cm

Para mi hermano Barto