Marria Pratts
“For me, conceptual art feels like it is trapped in museums,” Pratts says, distinguishing herself from generations of Spanish artists who eschew two-dimensional work on canvas, “Painting, on the other hand, is invested with magical and radical power.” “I very much believe in finding a special space for creation,” Pratts told this writer. “That’s where I can push my materials to the limit so magical things happen.”
Lyrical brushstrokes, spray lines, scribbles, handmade neon bars and burn holes (the artist regularly scarifies her canvases with flame in order to “transform” what she describes as “a malaise in painting”). Her ultimate purpose: to underscore the near limitless possibilities of painterly freedom but also to represent what she calls “a wound.” “There is no life without a wound,” she declares shrewdly.
Pratts’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at at The ELM Foundation in New York, the Fundacion Joan Miró. Pratts was given pride of place at Barcelona’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA) 2022 triennial.
MARRIA PRATTS B 1988 Barcelona, Spain Lives and works in Barcelona, Spain