Mireya Masó

MIREYA MASÓ (Barcelona, 1963).
"Washing away". Series "London Parks". 2001.
Photography.
Digital print.
Diptych.
Measurements: 125 x 244 cm; 128 x 247 cm (frame).

This diptych is part of a photographic investigation that the artist Mireya Masó carried out in several parks in London. In them she omitted the human presence and yet it manifested itself in some way, in a latent way. She also explored the changing emotions aroused by the experience of domesticated nature. Time, together with the landscape, were the protagonists.

The Catalan artist Mireya Masó studied at the Escola Eina, at the Facultat de Belles Arts de Sant Jordi and at the Facultat de Humanitats de la Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. Although her work is fundamentally photographic, she denies that she is a photographer: for her photography is a means of expression and not an end in itself. In fact, Masó often draws her photographs before they are taken; in other words, she subtly "shades" the scenes in the search for a preconceived image. Video is another of his fundamental tools, which he often integrates with the photographic image in his exhibitions. Since the 2000s, her work has focused on natural scenery, something made possible and enriched by the various artist residencies she has enjoyed. Mireya Masó's landscapes are tamed and function as portraits of a human being who, by the way, is always omitted; among the most clearly tamed, an English garden (2000) stands out, whose results are reminiscent of British landscape painting with romantic roots, or her work Antarctica: experiment no. 1 (2006). In this case, and in front of perhaps the wildest nature he has portrayed, he generates images in which the artifice and the human gaze before the icebergs is very present: "In art, to make any gesture that goes beyond thought, it is inevitable to alter nature; that is why I try to make every act fully justified. Antarctica is the visible presence of change", he declares about this work, one of his best known. Among her artistic stays, the following stand out: the Centrum Beeldende Kunst of Rotterdam (Rotterdam, Netherlands, 1998); the Stichting Kaus Australis (Rotterdam, Netherlands, 2002); the Intercanvi Rhône-Alpes/Catalunya (France, 1998); the Europees Keramisch Werkcentrum (Den Bosch, Netherlands, 1999); the Delfina Studio Trust Award (London, 2000-2001); and the Esperanza Base (Antarctica, Argentina, 2006). Mireya Masó has had solo exhibitions at the RAM Foundation (Rotterdam, Netherlands, 2003); the Espace des Arts de Colomiers (France, 2002); the Valence Museum (Valence, France, 1999); the Europees Keramisch Werkcentrum (Den Bosch, Netherlands, 1999); the Museu de l'Empordà (Figueres, Barcelona, 2001); the Casa de América (Madrid, 2006); or the Centre d'Art Santa Mònica (Barcelona, 2010).