El Informador, Monday, June 25, 2001:
Galería de Arte Moderno de Guadalajara
Mummies in Oil
(translated)
The Mummies of Guanajuato are compared with the living as their analogies in an exhibition of oil paintings by the American artist called, simply, MG; works that show the window of possibility, the half-opened mouth of one mummy that almost tries to breathe, work coupled with its "analogies " the living "counterparts", in addition there are four Mexican landscapes that are related to the idea.
MG began painting the mummies' portraits following a deeply moving visit to Mexico's Museo de Las Momias in Guanajuato. While painting, she was imagining the beings who inhabited those bodies, recreating their history and their lives. As she continued painting she began noticing physical similarities between her friends and acquaintances and the mummies.
"Even knowing the 'facts' of these mummies' lives; where they lived, where they worked, their family history, how they died...their essence still eludes me. The living visages are a reflection of that; the impossibility of knowing a soul during life, and the deepening ambiguities after death", comments the painter through a bulletin.
The mummies' portraits are painted with a style that goes from abstract to realistic, in work that exudes warmth. One mummy seems frozen in the moment of his death, {in its counterpart} MG imagines the surrender, the chills of his last breath. One of the living "counterparts " is a self-portrait where the artist appears hung by a rope.
"My self-portrait was the last painting of the pairs to be completed. I had always seen the mummy as laughing at death before her time; and laughing with death at us after her demise. I planned to paint myself laughing, but something was missing, both from the painting and the series. The series needed a representation of a human's capacity to commit suicide or homicide." asserts the painter in a press release.
Accompanying the dead and their living mirrors, are four Mexican landscapes that you have to see more with introspection, than as landscapes.
Door, for example, is a work that seeks to express the capacity and necessity of choice in being human, of the myriad of options that we face everyday.
Las Momias will be on exhibition until the 30th of the month at the Galería de Arte Moderno de Guadalajara (375 Mariano Otero ).
