Mauricio Paz viola
“Nothing in the Void” opens a new path into the inner worlds of artist Mauricio Paz Viola. His images, colors and pictorial narrations awake in us dormant worlds in ourselves. We find ourselves naked to the soul, without conventions nor preconceived notions to invoke, and hence forced to come up with our own responses to our ephemeral landscapes.
If all the atoms making up the physical universe are mostly empty spaces, what, then, is our world but nothingness in the void? What will become of ourselves but amalgamations of atom-cosmos of constant movement and change?
I invite you to take upon this journey towards your interior, to know worlds we had known in our past lives and in cosmic visions…
The series, initiated in 2011 and in a ongoing creation process, shows my latest development in my own style and a candid search for the inner self. The colors awake sensations that invite the audience to roam the innermost corners of our souls and meet ourselves in a dialogue, in a creative interaction with ourselves.
I would define my artwork as a manifestation of self, an extension of my spirit or sub-consciousness, which is still beyond my grasp and lies at the deepest sphere of pure self. In particular, I try to minimize intellectual inclinations when I create to prevent the ego, the fictitious self from intervening, and hence my works are the most loyal reflections of who I am (dreamer, fantasy-prone, sensitive, sexual and a bit dark and gloomy sometimes). I paint, therefore I am.
My works feature images of imaginary landscapes, empty or inhabited by unknown beings – landscapes that externalize a constant inner struggle of being human, that visualizes conflict between good and evil, between light and darkness… hence, the best way to describe my work is – landscapes inhabited by my own self, where a step forward is eternal light and a step backwards is total darkness.
In reality, my work refrains from saying too much: it was never my idea to talk about politics or social matters in my work. More than anything, my oil paintings, watercolours and collages are an invitation to enter the world of dreams, where the viewer can escape from the mundane for a few moments – like some kind of hallucinogen – being in there and being as oneself, and see things in a different way. This is why I have chosen an abstract approach which provides such resources. I am convinced that these images exist somewhere in the universe, and that I have seen them in the many previous lives I have lived as a particle of cosmic dust and am now only re-creating these worlds, never before seen by others, with luxurious details and narratives.
In a nutshell, a constant theme of my work is life itself as it is manifested in nature, the universe (or universes) and the infinite worlds and dimensions about which we know nothing, towards which biology, science, art try to grapple… in a word, LIFE.
