Walk Me To the Moon

Martina´s drawings reveal a fascination with a line. Its ability to emerge out of nowhere. To stay for a while and to disappear again. To be a representation, but also to simply exist just like that, just for itself. Although she studied at the Department of Painting in the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, she didn´t consider painting as an isolated medium concentrated merely on canvas and paint. She conducted a patient dialogue with painting and step by step she established a minimalistic form of expression focused on inconspicuous and imperceptible situations. She has been searching and discovering them in minimal gestures in
her drawings on paper, later in spatial interventions involving sound, light and performance. However, this diverse collection of various artistic expressions, has always had its roots indrawing - line transforming in material, in its state, time and space. In such a way that everything depicted and written provides an explanation of what is happening and what has happened.
The line is not only a gesture or a description of shape, it is a record, a story. On paper, in space, in word, in light and isound. Because, as Martina states: “I need light, because you know it's there, even though you can´t touch it. I need paper, because it holds everything - on it and inside of it. It can hold shape, it remembers. It´s haptic, when you draw you always touch it with your hands. I need space where I display the piece. They are equal. I need sound because of a similar principle to light. Impossible to catch, but it is there. And I need a word, because a word can do anything you can imagine.”
The theme of her works is hidden in the line itself, in landscapes, in monochrome ink drawings, or in the most subtle form on a piece of paper torn from the notebook. That’s where, chained in quiet notes and references, for those who look closely, the theme of ENCOUNTER reveals itself - as if copying the nature of line. An encounter very often emerges from out of nowhere, to stay with you, and then to disappear again.
Martina Mäsiarová sees it in a metaphor - such as an encounter with a mountain, universe, moon, sun, or with herself. She calls it “a feeling of a mountain”, that she experiences anew when she encounters someone or something. It is an ability - to accept, to connect, to surrender, but without getting lost, dissolving or vanishing away. To stay herself, to stay firm and solid. It is a constant balance between getting closer and receding. Like gravity. Like the Moon, the Sun and Earth. Like a line that can rise up from the surface and vanish at the same place. For it is only by its movement that what has been hidden in the blank areas is revealed. In balance and in tension, the same as in life.


photo credit: Ján Skaličan