BIOGRAPHY
Maureen Corvalán was born in Santiago de Chile. She is a visual artist, double bass player and psychologist. At the young age of 13 she began playing electric bass in her school orchestra and at 17 she began studying a Bachelor of Arts with a major in double bass at the Catholic University conservatory and then at the University of Chile. It was during her 5 years living in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, for her studies at the Conservatorium Van Amsterdam, that she began her approach to the visual arts (2012). It was the distance, the extreme cold, the memory, an unknown landscape, the appearance of some memories together with the contact and dialogue with the work of multiple artists, which acted as a springboard and opened her curiosity to give form to the memory. It is in this way that the artist gives a place to the materials she lived with in her childhood, in relation to the work of her grandmother, a seamstress, and grandfather, an upholsterer. In this sense, her work is an encounter that locates memory, her memory and other memories. Exploration that Corvalán allows herself to translate into the dimensions of the abstract universe based on that which is found at “the limits of representation” with ease and in allegory of what is public and what is private, what is intimate and what is external, perhaps as a way of avoiding oblivion and thereby shoring up certain reminiscences. Maureen Corvalán's work can today be found in Chile, New York, New Zealand, London, Switzerland, Peru, Miami, Bangkok and the Middle East, Bahrain, among others.
R. De Witte.
RESEARCH
The visual development of the artist's body of work has always been linked to research. In this sense, her works are presented as an abstract narrative that dialogues with memory, the everyday and what was present through an exploration of materials and technique. In this way, paint, threads, tacks, pins, nails, textiles and other objects are not random in her works of paintings and mixed techniques. In fact, each element in its uniqueness, in accumulation or spillage is arranged before the viewer's gaze as a translation effect. An example of the above is the research that the artist has dedicated to synthetic enamel regarding the complexities and virtues that the use of this type of unconventional paint presents in art. In this dimension, the use of enamel responds to the qualities of its body, its shine, plasticity and other difficulties. The latter propose an insistent work with colour based on the exploration of the registration of the footprint and the form that it can take on different supports: linen, glass, wood, different types of paper under an execution that considers the minimum possible control. It is in this way that the artist inscribes and records her footprints, in an abstract and minimalist way with particular forms and perfectly defined edges, being other stranger, simpler and more complex ones that she records through incredible three-dimensional volumes caused by the inevitable “excess” (of paint). The latter, due to the almost non-existent use of the brush.
R. De Witte
INSPIRATION
For Maureen Corvalán, inspiration is a necessary condition to continue as well as to begin. In the words of the artist, “inspiration sometimes runs out. However, to find it again, you have to return to the beginning, to what was left pending and, above all, you have to take a step towards the unknown.” Indeed, the memory of the dedicated work she saw her grandparents do speaks a little of that return to childhood, to that first curious look at something that was new and then became everyday. This exercise of observing the environment, nature, her nature, the sea, travel, poetry, cinema and inhabiting discomfort are just some of the escapes that enable her inspiration, the dialogue with beauty, what is her own and foreign. In this sense, music “her music” and the double bass - as the artist says - are vital elements that actively participate as a condition of possibility to “start and continue” not only her pictorial work but also, in turn, everything that surrounds her relationship with everyday life. The greatest inspirations, references and influences in the development of her artistic work: memories, travels, Gustav Mahler, Igor Stravinsky, Violeta Parra, Jaco Pastorius, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Luis Alberto Spinetta, Alejandra Pizarnik, Pepe Donoso, Freud, Lacan, David Lynch, Lars Von Trier, Mark Rotko, Antonie Tapies, Robert Rauschenberg, Takesada Matsutani and Suzan Frecon among others.
R. De Witte