A process so simple; a woman folding a piece of white fabric. It is an action repeated time and again in every household. But nothing is simple here. The folds move in time, the folder appears and disappears. How do we anchor ourselves in the action? Is time moving forwards, back or looping?
The Hungarian artist, Dora Maurer (1937-) made the film ‘Timing’ in various versions between 1973 and 1980. It has many of the ingredients which typify her work. The subject is often an object or situation which she subjects to a repeated, rhythmical action that disrupts both the object and the picture plan through which we view it. ‘The heuristic experience of movement and change became the basis of my mode of survival in the late Sixties, both from a personal and artistic standpoint.’ (White Cube, s.d).
I first encountered her work at the retrospective exhibition at Tate Modern 2019-2021. The breadth of this work covered printmaking, drawing, painting and film across more that fifty years. Whilst it has huge visual variety, the essence of her enquiry has not changed. She proposes an action and varies it through time which might be linear or non-linear. She is interested in the action but also the traces of the action. Her composite work ‘Throwing the Plate from Very High’ (1970) juxtapositions a series of photographic stills, recording the act of casting a printing plate from several stories high, with a print taken subsequently from the plate. In conversation with Maurer, Julliet Bingham proposed, ‘Trace-leaving, movement, chance and displacement are recurring concerns throughout your entire practice’ to which Maurer replied, ’yes, and destruction!’ (Bingham, 2019:90).
I do not propose to write a biography. Details of her life and achievements can be found in Wikipedia and on her website. Significant points are that she began her artistic career as a graphic artist studying printmaking, but in the early 1970s became involved with street action art and group improvisations, exploring action and reaction. Her work was not always well received by those in authority; on graduation from the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts, her diploma works were rejected by the Academy and a series of group art actions in 1973 were closed down by the authorities (Whitefield, 2019:101). Her photographic work ‘KV’s 1st of May Parade on Artificial Ground’ (1971) is quietly subversive.
Although her work has changed in format and medium through time, underlying concerns with folding space and time, non-linear views and disrupting the viewing plane are constant. In her film, ‘Relative Swingings’ (1973) the simple proposition of moving an object, the light playing on it and the recording mechanism, at the same time, is clearly displayed. The work expands beyond the trace in light left by the cylinder, to include the mechanism, the space within which the action is happening, the camera recording it, the artists/actants and even the camera filming the camera filming. Though she often appears in her photographic work, but it is not autobiographical; she is there as part of the process.
Maurer’s approach to work is rigorous and disciplined. She starts a work with a clear plan, which may be presented as part of the final work, for instance in ‘Parallel Lines Analysis’ (1977). In ‘Tracing Space I, II and Plan’ (1979), she explores her studio through a series of images which dilate the space, pushing the walls in and out. Here she is varying the viewpoint, but in other works she varies the surface itself through a series of interventions recorded across time. Her objective is to explore thoroughly, even exhaust, the opportunities offered by her materials.
In the print series, ‘Traces of a Circle’ (1974), she impressed aluminium sheet with a loop of piano wire, printed the sheet as a drypoint plate, and then repeated the process (Bingham, 2019:90). At each cycle, the previous marks are diminished and new marks superimposed, creating a record of process and outcome. As a printmaker, this is one of my favourite works. Her method is clearly laid out for us, and I love the playful inventiveness of her approach coupled with the clarity of vision. I find each print interesting but presenting them together as a single work adds the extra dimension of time to the flat surface.
Since the 1980s, the main focus of Maurer’s work has been large colourful paintings, which may seem a strange change in direction from her pared-back, monochrome works on paper or film. However, the same concerns are present and this work is a development of her process of slicing space, pushing the picture plane into a further dimension. ‘Displacements I-6’ (1976) shows how this new work arose from repeated, formal action in a grid which was then mathematically translated to achieve new arrangements, ‘shifting and re-ordering the layers one upon the other…..the colour-coded fields change their place… layering and becoming closer together or more sparse’ (Bingham, 2019:96). Details are then extracted to create a new plane. A series of works on her website show the sequence and development of the idea into painting (though you have to scroll through). She has continued to develop these ideas up to the present, making large scale works of canvas on wood which describe apparently transparent, intersecting curved planes. I do not find these works as involving as her earlier work. Whilst the premise is interesting, I find these paintings too complete, offering little space for the imagination. Her earlier practice holds me because she extends the viewer experience of the work from planning through process of creation to finished, accumulate pieces.
More of her works can be seen on the Tate and MoMA websites and on her own website. Some of her films are available on Youtube and the Instagram account shows current exhibitions, works and publications. There is a TateShots film introducing the recent exhibition in London, and I am really grateful that I had the opportunity to visit it and be introduced to this intriguing artist whose work is rarely seen in Britain.
Image
Fábián, E (2011) Dóra Maurer Self-Portrait with Seven Twists CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
References
Bingham, J. (2019) In Conversation with DóraMaurer In: Bingham, J. (Ed.) (2019) Dóra Maurer. London:Tate Publishing.
White Cube (s.d) Dóra Maurer. At: https://whitecube.com/artists/artist/dora_maurer (Accessed: 10/7/2022).
Whitehead, C. (2019) Chronology In: Bingham, J. (Ed.) (2019) Dóra Maurer. London:Tate Publishing.
Links
https://www.instagram.com/dora.maurer/?hl=en
https://www.moma.org/artists/42457
https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/dora-maurer
https://whitecube.com/artists/artist/dora_maurer
