The Art of María García
By Judy Mam
“What we look for in art is a sense of urgency, that the artist couldn’t help but create. What we have in the contemporary art world is a lot of calculation”. Roberta Smith.
On occasion of CADAF, the first Contemporary Art and Digital Art Fair, we presented Simply María: The Art Of María García.
Digital art tends to emphasize technology and its tools at the expense of self-expression. DADA harnesses it to invite artists to express themselves as freely and honestly as possible. There’s no better example than María García.
María represents the potential that the digital realm has to empower new artists without any prior point of access. She uses technology to make art; her art is not about technology. Her work humanizes the digital.
For artists like María, who has no access to formal art training, or even for artists with formal training but no access to the art world, technology offers validation, a new audience, a community, collectors, and the promise of financial gain.
María is no less an artist than anyone who benefits from the privilege of access to art schools, sophisticated tools, museums, galleries, and the art world career circuit. In fact, she is more remarkable precisely because she creates art without any of these things. Somehow, these limitations give her art a unique point of view. Her art has no bad habits or influences: it is pure self-expression.
María García has made over 10,000 drawings on DADA. At first glance, they may seem crude, but with a few eloquent strokes, a sense of mischief and utter directness, María is capable of conjuring great specificity of gesture and emotion.
Obsessive about themes, she creates series of sports cars, uncanny nightmares, and mysterious, faceless women. Mostly alone, in the company of a glass of wine, they suggest a deep interior life.
According to art historian Agnes Berecz, author of the book 100 Years,
100 Artworks: “By presenting this imaginative and formally inventive work, DADA provides a counterpoint and active resistance to both the fetishization of technology and the over-aestheticized practice of art”.
With its 360º digital projection, CADAF presented the perfect opportunity to exhibit María’s strikingly minimalist art. Culling from over 10,000 digital drawings, Beatriz Ramos created a 10-minute 360 immersive video that was projected on the walls of this unprecedented art fair.
María’s graphic, minimalist style, her colorful series of cars and her enigmatic drawings caught the attention of panelists, artists and fairgoers alike.
As for María herself, she lives in Cumaná, Venezuela and despite her lifelong dream of becoming a fashion designer, she works at a car-wash. DADA is where she makes her art and she considers it family.
