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Julia Masvernat_dibujos involuntarios_#1

ARTISTS

JULIA MASVERNAT

1973, Buenos Aires,  Argentina

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JULIA MASVERNAT

WORK

prolongacion ondas

PROPAGATION OF SEISMIC WAVES

I venture a warped and jumbled geometry, born of observation of urban "landforms": melted pavements, tangled cables, twisted irons, and so forth.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Art resides in that gaze—prior image that comes into focus when Julia finds the remains that suit her and translates them for us.
Sharp as a pencil, as a scalpel, that gaze examines and replicates the shapes of those remains.
Her work quiets time, the time it took those pieces —part of a construction, of a destruction, pieces scattered awaiting sublimation, spoil-works—to reach her, for them to stop and delight.
Art’s preferred situation.
Alchemy.
Julia’s work suggests seismography; she likes the idea of being a seismograph, of being a medium for those traces, and of her work coming to her complete.
(....)
Juan José Cambre
June 2019

INVOLUNTARY DRAWINGS

Dib Involuntarios

Involuntary drawings
(2016-2018)

They say “geometry calms” because it helps us to understand and translate, to organize and balance the world. In my work, I venture an unsettling and contorted geometry. The “Involuntary Drawings” series emerges from close observation of urban landforms”: melted pavements, tangles of wires and plants, twisted irons, and other phenomena. These situations, with their grotesque mutant nature and manifestly fragile materials, feed the imaginary that underlies this series of  “non-paintings”.  Acrylic on paper cut with scalpel.
 

SUSPEND THE FIRM EARTH UNDER YOUR FEET

suspender la tierra

Suspending the firm ground under their feet (2016)

Acrylic on laser- cut fiberboard.

These images arise from a series of photographs of spaces in the city and on its outskirts, from close observation of marginal places, demolitions, construction sites, and abandoned buildings.  Images of materials (iron, wood, debris, holes, gaps, glass, and scaffolding) at a fleeting moment during a process of transformation.

This project was exhibited at the Buenos Aires Museum of Contemporary Art in 2016. Curator: Mariana Rodríguez Iglesias.

THE PAINT BONE

hueso pintura

Painting´s Bones
(2018-2020)
Acrylic on laser-cut fiberboard

My search begins with the observation of my own habitat: the inconstant, oppressive, and fascinating urban space. Where do we place our body? I start working from the marks and debris, the imprint of what is consumed: the bones of language and the ambiguity of signs. When does writing became drawing and drawing writing? I search those places with diffuse borders: the broken structure of things. I rehearse a warped and jumbled geometry, that arises from the observation of urban "landforms". These situations, where mutant nature and the fragility of materials is shown in a grotesque way, feeds the imaginary with which I develop this series of bone-painting. 
 

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Exhibicones

JULIA MASVERNAT

EXHIBITIONS

22.6.19 - 27.7.19 

Propagation of seismic waves.

Curator:  Juan Jose Cambre

Your own body a seismograph

that captures beauty like nobody else

of the underground swell,

the patient construction

of the fault.

Claudia massin

 

 

Disorder is essential for "creation",

while it is defined by a certain "order".

Paul Valery

 

 

I work from the marks and rubble, the imprint of what has been consumed. I look for those places with fuzzy edges, where the waters mix: the sweet sea. I test a deformed and jumbled geometry, which arises from the observation of urban “geographical accidents”: melted pavements, tangled cables, twisted iron and others.

 

Start point:

It is nothing new, they are remnants of demolition.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Art is contained in that gaze, a previous image that comes into focus when Julia finds the remains that match her and translates them for us.

That look that, like a sharp pencil, like a scalpel, reviews and replicates the shapes of those residues.

His work keeps time silent, the time it took for those pieces that were part of a construction, of a destruction and that are scattered, waiting for their sublimation, dispossession-work; brake - delight.

Favorite Situation of Art.

Alchemy.

Julia refers to seismography, she likes the idea of being the seismograph, that her work is done,

be a medium of those traces.

Traces,

raw material of his art.

Maybe as original support.

The definitive support comes next: paper, wood and that sharp look - it's already a scalpel or a saw.

Color - it happens.

And so and everything, with that imperious explanation of the discovery of the motive and the mediumistic and laborious process presented and present, thanks to his art this secret - clandestine scoop appears.

 

 

Juan Jose Cambre

MARKED HOUSES
An audiovisual installation by Julia Masvernat and Julia Suero
2018

The Tour de la Lanterne (Tower of the Lantern) was built during the 15th century. Located at the entrance to the port of the city of La Rochelle, on the French Atlantic coast, it first functioned as a lighthouse and watchtower. And for three centuries (XVII, XVIII and XIX) as a prison, where they imprisoned sailors, soldiers and political prisoners. In 1879 it was converted into a historical monument. On the stone walls of the tower remain the writings of the prisoners: texts and drawings etched on the surfaces. The Tour de la Lanterne subsists and underlies the present city. A city that was a slave port in the 16th century, a commercial and smuggler port; today the commercial port moved a few kilometers to the north, and the original port remains next to the old town as a historical space.

During 2017 we worked with Julia Suero, a sound artist who lives in La Rochelle, in field research to carry out an audiovisual installation on the fifth floor of the tower. We focus our gaze and our listening on those writings and drawings.

The result is an audiovisual installation that integrates a series of handcrafted analog projections with lights and magnifying glasses, digital video projections and immersive multi-channel sound.
The exhibition opened in March 2018 within the framework of a series of artistic interventions that the Center for National Monuments organized in various historical monuments in different cities throughout France. The work remains for three months on display. On each floor of the tower, different visual and sound artists developed site-specific interventions. To propose a rereading
of space and add one more layer to this superposition of footprints and stories.

«I use in this work drawing as a means of knowledge and transformation. I copy those writings to get closer to them, each one with a different style, I draw them on paper and screen, on the landscape and the stone walls. The prisoners' inscriptions include their names, the dates they were locked up, drawings of ships and tools, characters and indecipherable texts, in various languages (French, English, Spanish, Dutch). Many prisoners describe the situation and the ship in which they were captured, and pay homage to their ships. It is a male universe of sailors and pirates, carpenters, blacksmiths, warships and corsairs - privateers were ships prepared for their crew to engage in assaulting and destroying pirate and enemy ships with the authorization of the government of their nation. Often they were transformed into pirate ships themselves. " (Julia Masvernat)

Some examples:
"IOHN GARE / IOHN: GARE: V / AS: TKEN: ON: BORD: THE: MORNIN G: STA: PRIVATAR: OF: BR / IXHAM: MOVNF.6GUN / IUNEY 15 1778"
(John Gare was captured aboard the Corsair Morning Star from Brixham, armed with 6 guns, on June 15, 1778)

"VIVIER-G / 15 JOURS DE PRISON POUR / AVOIR DIT A UN / BRIGADIER DE FER [MER] / LA PORTE"
(Vivier-G 15 days in prison for having told a brigadier to close the door)

"FAVEL / ICI L ON REFLAI / CHI.A SA GENAICE / quI CE PASE"
(Favel. Ici l´on réfléchit a sa jeunesse qui se passe. Favel. Here he reflected on his passing youth.)


«I work from the marks and the rubble, what remains, the trace of what has been consumed. The bones of the tongue and the ambiguity of the signs. When does writing become drawing and drawing becomes writing? I look for those places with fuzzy edges, where the waters mix: the sweet sea.
Magic lanterns (pre-cinema projection devices) with their magnifying glasses in infinite rotation movement, generate a minimum instant of sharp image. Only for a second can we perceive the image in focus. It seems that the walls (cold, damp and dark walls) transpire those images.
The video projections are large female hands that draw, rewrite and amplify, in an ephemeral way, the texts on the walls. »(Julia Masvernat)

«Regarding the creation of sound, the acoustic material is initially recorded from what the tower itself proposes in terms of sound, both in its interior and exterior space: steps on the stairs, wooden doors, winds, waves of the sea . To these are added other electroacoustic sounds such as the gesture of carving the stone. From this material, I compose a dreamlike and immersive soundscape to which female voices are added that interpret some texts found in the scriptures: mainly the names of the prisoners and dates. The result is a mixed sound universe that is enriched with layers of diverse origins and is progressively transformed. A poetic sound rereading of the building and its history.
The soundscape is broadcast in a stereo system to which four small independent speakers are added that emit acoustic sounds. The latter are located next to the magic lantern devices so that when the viewer approaches them, his perception changes. »(Julia Suero)

General production: Quinzaine Numérique

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Bio

JULIA MASVERNAT

BIO

 

Julia Masvernat (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1973)

Julia Masvernat works with basic superimposed forms of lines and planes in which figure and background take on equal importance. Free of any reference, these abstract works are an invitation to the game of freely interpreting or inventing new meanings. From a playful encounter with materials, she constructs objects or draws maps or paths that are found in a hybrid place between the representational and the abstract, the artisanal and the industrial, the ephemeral and the durable, the analogical and the digital.

Masvernat graduated from the University of Buenos Aires as a Graphic designer. She also studied with Tulio de Sagastizábal and Jorge Gumier Maier. During 2003 and 2005 she participated in the scholarship program for artists Rojas-UBA-Kuitca, the TRAMA project of cooperation and confrontation between artists (2005) and the LIPAC Platform - Laboratory of Contemporary Artistic Research and Practices (2009).

She has been featuring her work since 1999 and her most relevant solo exhibitions are: Casas marcadas, (Tour de la Lanterne, La Rochelle, France, 2018); Suspender la tierra firma bajo sus pies, (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2016); La supremacía de color (Galería Praxis, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2013); Devorador de luz (Galería 713 Arte Contemporáneo, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2012) and  Luciernaga Sonora (Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2005)

Additionally, she participated in group exhibitions in various artistic institutions such as: Centro Cultural de la Memoria Haroldo Conti (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2014); Fundación Proa (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2009): Plataforma soundtoys/interfaces sonoro visuales (Montevideo, Uruguay, 2006); Video Brasil (São Paulo, Brazil, 2005) and Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2002), among others. 

Regarding awards, she was selected to participate in the Art and New Technologies MAMBA-LIMBø-Fundación Telefónica contest (2006) and received the first prize for the category Experimental Multimedial work. In 2007 she participated in the arteBA-Petrobras Award with her project La rebelión de los Artefactos and in 2018 she received the scholarship Beca a la Creación (Fondo Nacional de las Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina). 

She has been teaching in different educational institutions and participated in interdisciplinary groups such as: Colectivo Terraza (2001-2005), TPS (Taller Popular de Serigrafía, 2002-2003), LAC (Laboratorio Audiovisual Comunitario, 2010-2012) and Nocturama (2013-2016).
 

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