RICARDO MAZAL NEW PAINTINGS

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1 RICARDO MAZAL NEW PAINTINGS

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3 RICARDO MAZAL NEW PAINTINGS Attraction oil on canvas, 48 x 48 in. 198 Davenport Rd, Toronto ON M5R 1J2 Canada I or I info@odonwagnergallery.com odonwagnergallery.com

4 THE WINE OF THE WINDS: RICARDO MAZAL Gary Michael Dault Out of bitterness itself the clear wine of the imagination will be pressed and the dance prosper thereby. William Carlos Williams There is no such thing, writes the great American poet, William Carlos Williams, in his Kora in Hell, that with a twist of the imagination, cannot be something else. Having recourse to this twist of the imagination is a methodological given, a procedural axiom, for Mexican-born painter, Ricardo Mazal. A masterful wielder of diverse media to serve his expressive ends, Mazal has been both inventive and fearless in his employment of certain multidisciplinary processes that dance attendant upon the presentation of his final vision for a work. He has had frequent recourse, for example, to photography. But Mazal s photographs are rarely ever positioned as ends in themselves. Rather, he tends to further manipulate his photos in the computer, thereby generating suggestive digital sketches. When he finally does begin to paint which he undertakes with remarkable force and brio he continues to photograph the painting as it develops, stage by stage, always circling back to the computer with these vivid progressphotographs, where he can then produce even more complex digital sketches in which the painting and the photographic image interpenetrate and meld themselves into the gathering rush of a surging, ongoing idea. The process, though digitally assisted and enriched, thus enacts and replays the cyclical and regenerative energies of the natural world with its endless, relentless, exalting (and sometimes terrifying) play of birth-death-rebirth which all of us are heir to. Mazal s paintings often employ the grid as an organizational armature (see, for example, his Kora C20, Kora C21, Kora C22, Kailash G3 and the majestic Agosto 8.13). Unlike most gridconstrued, minimal works by other artists, however, where colour and shape are offered

5 as chromatic and compositional ends in themselves, Mazal s grid-supported paintings are somehow only initially tethered by their underlying structure. In the end, the grid is used as a route to further freedoms (the way a writer can count on bedrock languagestores and certain syntactical givens beneath what he then writes). Having erected the grid as home-base, Mazal can then allow his paintings to fly free as he does with the flapping, fluttering, strip-like, ribbonlike, banner-like, flag-like, high-wind diptych dancework, Kailish PF7 and Kailash PF8). These muscular, exuberantly assertive paintings of Mazal s are strange, compelling admixtures of tenderness, compassion and what the Spanish would characterize as duende (having soul, possessing dark authenticity ). The paintings with titles referencing, for example, Kora and Kailish, are evocations of an epic trilogy of art-enterprises which took him on a journey to, for example, the Tibet Himalayas in 2009, and specifically to the mysterious Mount Kailash, sacred to Tibetan Buddhists and Hindus. It was in the course of this twenty-one day sojourn at the hallowed mountain (to which Tibetans bring their dead for a sky burial ) that Mazal became galvanized by the beauty and mystery of the mountain itself which (as Cezanne did for Mount St. Victoire) he made palpable in painting after painting (see, for example, Kailash M20 and Septiembre 24.13). the wind-whipped prayer flags, for example, positioned across the mountain (in paintings like Kora C21 and Kora C22, you can feel the sanguine vitality of their saffrons and reds and golds, juxtaposed to the eternal snowcoldness of the mountain). According to Tibetan belief, the forbidding winds blowing from the mountain serve to deliver the blessings inscribed on the flags to the world at large. Very few painters have ever succeeded as well as Ricardo Mazal in so memorably offering the runaway energies of the natural world in its most elemental, brut form and, at the same time, ameliorating the terrible imperatives of death and fate, regret and inevitability with such compassionate and sweetly elaborated ruminations about life and its meaning. It is indeed bracingly strange and exhilarating to see a painter acting in such a profoundly painterly way his paintings bristle and shout with formal mastery and yet to find him to be, at heart, a gentle, if intense, metaphysician. Kora in Hell: Improvisations (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1957, p.44). Fascinated not only by the nobility of the mountain s imperturbable presence, to which he pays homage in work after work, using wipers and scrapers (which he wields with virtuoso skill) to mimic the mountain s forbidding flanks, he became transfixed, in equal measure, by the ritual material the mountain engendered: by the aliveness of Ricardo Mazal I New Paintings

6 1 KAILASH M20 oil on linen, 63 x 95 in. / 160 x 240 cm

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8 2 KORA C22 oil on linen, 72 x 72 in. / 183 x 183 cm

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10 3 AGOSTO 8.13 oil on linen, 63 x 95 in. / 160 x 240 cm

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12 4 ABRIL oil on linen, 40 x 42 in. / 101 x 107 cm

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14 5 JULIO oil on linen, 90 x 44 in. / 229 x 112 cm

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16 6 KORA C21 oil on linen, 72 x 72 in. / 183 x 183 cm

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18 7 KAILASH PF7 & KAILASH PF8 (DIPTYCH) oil on linen, 80 x 164 in. / 203 x 417 cm

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20 8 JULIO oil on linen, 90 x 44 in. / 229 x 112 cm

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22 9 SEPTIEMBRE oil on linen, 78 x 105 in. / 198 x 266 cm

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24 10 SEPTIEMBRE oil on linen, 60 x 60 in. / 152 x 152 cm

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26 11 KAILASH G3 oil on linen, 66 x 78 in. / 168 x 198 cm

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28 12 ENERO oil on linen, 60 x 60 in. / 152 x 152 cm

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30 13 KORA C20 oil on linen, 72 x 72 in. / 183 x 183 cm

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32 RICARDO MAZAL Ricardo Mazal, born in Mexico in 1950, currently lives and works in New York and Santa Fe, New Mexico. In the last decade, Ricardo Mazal has had eleven solo museum exhibitions in Mexico and the United States, including a 2006 retrospective in the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City. Mazal has exhibited extensively in the United States, Canada, Latin America, Europe and Asia. SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2013 Odon Wagner Contemporary, Toronto, Canada Elins Eagles-Smith Gallery, San Francisco, CA, USA 2012 Museo Estación Indianilla, Mexico City, Mexico Sundaram Tagore Gallery, New York, NY, USA Sundaram Tagore Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, USA 2011 Bentley Gallery, Scottsdale, AZ, USA Sundaram Tagore Gallery, Hong Kong, China 2010 Sundaram Tagore Gallery, New York, NY, USA Buschlen Mowatt Gallery, Vancouver, BC, Canada Elins Eagles-Smith Gallery, San Francisco, CA, USA Museo Abstracto Manuel Felguerez, Zacatecas, Mexico Sundaram Tagore Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, USA 2009 Museum of Art, Queretaro, Queretaro, Mexico Buschlen Mowatt Gallery, Vancouver, BC, Canada 2008 Sundaram Tagore Gallery, New York, NY, USA Mexican Cultural Institute, Washington, DC, USA Dwight Hackett Projects, Santa Fe, NM, USA Elins Eagles-Smith Gallery, San Francisco, CA, USA 2007 Mas Art Moderno y Contemporáneo, Barcelona, Spain Buschlen Mowatt Gallery, Palm Desert, CA, USA Buschlen Mowatt Gallery, Vancouver, BC, Canada 2006 Centro de las Artes, Pinacoteca, Monterrey, Mexico Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Scottsdale, AZ, USA Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City, Mexico Buschlen, Mowatt Gallery, Palm Desert, CA, USA Anne Reed Gallery, Ketchum, USA 2005 Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City, Mexico Buschlen Mowatt Gallery, Vancouver, BC, Canada Chiaroscuro Gallery, Scottsdale, AZ, USA 2004 Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe, NM, USA Chiaroscuro Gallery. Santa Fe, NM, USA Mas Art Moderno y Contemporáneo, Barcelona, Spain Anne Reed Gallery, Ketchum, ID, USA Robert Kidd Gallery, Birmingham, AL, USA 2003 Elins Eagles-Smith Gallery, San Francisco, CA, USA Aurobora Press, San Francisco, CA, USA 2002 Galería Ramis Barquet, Monterrey, Mexico Chiaroscuro Gallery, Santa Fe, NM, USA The Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe, NM, USA Galería Ramis Barquet, New York, NY, USA 2001 Galerie 89, Aarwangen, Switzerland Rule Gallery, Denver, CO, USA Galería de Arte Mexicano, Mexico City, Mexico Aurobora Press, San Francisco, CA, USA Ricardo Mazal I New Paintings

33 2000 Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey, Monterrey, Mexico Galería Ramis Barquet, Monterrey, Mexico Bentley Gallery, Scottsdale, AZ, USA Robert Kidd Gallery, Birmingham, AL, USA 1999 Rule Modern and Contemporary Gallery, Denver, CO, USA Erickson & Elins/Fine Art, San Francisco, CA, USA Aurobora Press, San Francisco, CA, USA Ramis Barquet Gallery, New York, NY, USA Bentley Gallery, Scottsdale, AZ, USA 1998 Galería Maeght, Barcelona, Spain 1997 Bentley Gallery, Scottsdale, AZ, USA Rule Modern and Contemporary Gallery, Denver, CO, USA Michael Dunev Gallery, San Francisco, CA, USA Vail-Giesler Contemporary Art, Des Moines, IA, USA 1996 Galería Ramis Barquet, Monterrey, NL, Mexico 1994 Galería Maeght, Barcelona, Spain 1992 Galería de Arte Mexicano, Mexico City, Mexico 1990 Scott Alan Gallery, New York, NY, USA Galería de Arte Mexicano, Mexico City, Mexico Galería Arte Actual Mexicano, Monterrey, Mexico 1989 Scott Alan Gallery, New York, NY, USA 1988 Galería de Arte Mexicano, Mexico City, Mexico Galería Arte Actual Mexicano, Monterrey, Mexico Galería Nomen, Barcelona, Spain Galería Carl Van Der Voort, Ibiza, Spain GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2011 Sundaram Tagore Gallery, Hong Kong, China Sundaram Tagore Gallery, New York, NY, USA Tagore Gallery, Hong Kong, China Tagore Gallery, Beverley Hills, CA, USA 2010 Museum of Art, Queretaro, Queretaro, Mexico Sundaram Tagore Gallery, New York, NY, USA Buschlen Mowatt Gallery, Vancouver, BC, Canada 2009 Sundaram Tagore Gallery, New York, NY, USA Sundaram Tagore Gallery, Hong Kong, China 2008 Scottsdale Museum of Comtemporary Art, Scottsdale, AZ, USA 2007 Emma Molina, Monterrey, Mexico Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ, USA 2006 Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City, Mexico 2005 Anne Reed Gallery, Ketchum, ID, USA Mexican Cultural Institute, Washington, DC, USA Robischon Gallery, Denver, CO, USA 2004 Galería Lucía de la Puente, Lima, Peru 2003 Ramis Barquet Gallery, New York, NY, USA Chiaroscuro Gallery, Santa Fe, NM, USA Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey, Monterrey, CA, USA Michael Martin Galleries, San Francisco, CA, USA 2002 Galería Lucía de la Puente, Lima, Peru Robert Kidd Gallery, Birmingham, AL, USA 2001 Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City, Mexico Bushlen-Mowatt Gallery, Palm Desert, CA, USA Michael Martin Galleries, San Francisco, CA, USA Ricardo Mazal I New Paintings

34 2000 The Mexican Cultural Institute, New York, NY, USA Galería Enrique Guerrero, Mexico City, Mexico 1999 Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City, Mexico Ramis Barquet Gallery, New York, NY, USA Anne Reed Gallery, Ketchum, ID, USA Michael Martin Galleries, San Francisco, CA, USA th Salon de Arte, Bancomer, Mexico City, Mexico Limn Gallery, San Francisco, CA, USA 1997 Americas Society Art Gallery, New York, NY, USA Megan Fox Gallery, Santa Fe, NM, USA Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey, NL, Mexico Red, Robin Rule Gallery, Denver, CO, USA 1996 Brewster Gallery, New York, NY, USA Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey, Mexico 1995 Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey, Mexico Galería Maeght, Madrid, Spain 1994 Artel Taurino, Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico, City; Mexico, Spain, and USA 1993 The Painting Center, New York, NY, USA 1992 Scott Alan Gallery, New York, NY, USA 1991 Galería Maeght, Barcelona, Spain Galería Carl Van Der Voort, Ibiza, Spain 1990 Parallel Project: New Moments in Mexican Painting, New York, NY, USA 1989 Galería Arte Actual Mexicano, Monterrey, Mexico 1988 Galería Nomen, Barcelona, Spain Galería Carl Van Der Voort, Ibiza, Spain 1987 Galería Angel Romero, Madrid, Spain Tom Maddock Gallery, Barcelona, Spain Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, Spain AWARDS 2010 Creador Artistico, Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte (FONCA) 2010, Mexico 2002 Creador Artistico, Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte (FONCA) 2002, Mexico 1998 Creador Artistico, Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte (FONCA) 1998, Mexico 1991 Pollock Krassner Foundation, New York COLLECTIONS Banco de Mexico, Mexico City, Mexico Centro de las Artes, Monterrey, Mexico CEMEX, Monterrey, Mexico Cirque du Soleil, Montreal, Canada Deutsche Bank, New York, USA and Germany MACO-UNAM, Mexico City, Mexico Maeght Foundation, Paris, France Museo de Arte Abstracto Manuel Felguérez, Zacatecas, Mexico Museo del Arzobispado, Mexico City, Mexico Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Monterrey (MARCO), Monterrey, Mexico Museo de Arte Moderno (MAM), Mexico City, Mexico Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, New York, USA Private Collections in the USA, Mexico, Germany, France, Switzerland, Spain, Japan and Korea Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Scottsdale, USA Ricardo Mazal I New Paintings

35 Front & Back Cover: AGOSTO 8.13 (detail) Inside Front Cover: ENERO (detail) Inside Back Cover: ABRIL (detail) Scan the QR Code for more information CREDITS CURATORIAL LAYOUT DESIGN PRINTING Odon Wagner, Rafael Wagner and Caitlin McCullough Caitlin McCullough Angela Wagner Solisco Québec 198 Davenport Road, Toronto, Ontario M5R 1J2 Canada or odonwagnergallery.com ISBN: National Library of Canada Ricardo Mazal: New Paintings Copyright: Odon Wagner Gallery, 2013

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