MARTA MARCÉ (B. 1972)

The Catalonian painter, who now divides her time between Barcelona and London, has long cultivated an analogy between games and painting. At times she has made the connection representationally, in paintings that resemble game boards, but the comparison bears out most compellingly when she instead treats the process of painting as a sequence of "moves" bound by specific rules, albeit rules broad enough to allow for a certain degree of "play" within the structure. The artist speaks of "geometry as a live creature that constantly changes, each time giving us quite different random shapes and ideas that make up our real world." Marcé seems to avoid highly active optical combinations or the drama of Hans Hofmann-esque push-and-pull; her use of color is unruffled. As a result, one senses in these paintings an energy that is absorbed, yet in some way constrained. The game being played here is really, after all, a form of solitaire--which always has something melancholy about it (B. Schwabsky, "Marta Marcé: Riflemaker",Artforum, April 2008.).