In this works, Mar Ripoll begins a new period, influenced by artists like Picasso- where objects were analyzed and fragmented, to be reassembled in an abstract way. This reduction of images to minimal lines and shapes was part of the Cubist quest for simplification-. Also, by Kandinsky- who treats abstract shapes and colors as a way to evoke spirituality and human emotions. Also, Paul Klee- is important to understanding Mar´s paintings, Paul began each image with an abstract mark – a square, triangle, circle, line or point – and then allowed that motif to evolve or grow, almost like a living organism. Dalí, another referent for Mar, the iconic “dreamscapes” painted by Dalí are characterized by illustrating his own dreams, hallucinations and his inner mind. Miró is another painter whom Mar is linked, who when the Nazi invasion took place in France and with the victory of the Francoists, he was convinced that they would not let him paint anymore, that he could only go to the beach to draw in the sand and trace figures with cigarette smoke. When he painted the Constellations, he had the sensation of working underground, but it was a liberation for him, because in this way he did not think about the tragedy that surrounded me. And also, Mar, she is influenced by -abstract expressionism-, this style of art takes the spontaneity of surrealism and injects it with the dark humor of emotional wounds, De Kooning, an abstract expressionist movement of which he became one of its leaders in the mid-1950s. As his work evolved, the intense colors and elegant lines of the abstractions began to become more figurative works, and the coincidence of figures and abstractions continued.

In this exhibition “Primary Configurations” Mar Ripoll invents a new reality and the search for the essence of the human being. The artist focuses on figures created by combining human and animal attributes in her expressive works. These figures distort reality and are reminiscent of the world of theater, where fantasy, poetry, and comedy often serve as catalysts for the creation of a critical sense. In his work, Ripoll questions the interaction between good and evil in the context of world sociopolitical reality. In doing so, Ripoll interprets these themes not in black and white, but in multicolor, non-linear, but with charming cuts, profoundly serious but full of humor.

Primary Configurations- Text of the exhibition:

The movie “Call me by your name” tells of the relationship that is established over the summer between the young teenager, Elio, and Oliver, a man in his thirties who came to the family home to work with the father of the protagonist, specialist in ancient art.

Kirk, however, departs slightly from the traditional interpretation of the passage in question. He says that it is not only that everything real is constantly changing, but that in temporality itself the real finds its being. Permanence, since it exists of what is, is defined from its own temporality. Not only do things change, but the identity of the real is intimately linked to change and temporality. Change is the way of being. Identity is formed in the passing of time itself, in the lack of continuity of what things are and, therefore, of what the human being is.

Thus, and continuing with the film, after having sex for the first time, the two protagonists decide to take a bath in a lake with calm, apparently static waters. A space similar to that of the “swimming pool” where they begin to get to know each other in depth. Or the artificial raft to which Elio takes Oliver and which turns out to be his favorite place for reading and reflection. Seemingly static spaces, on which time revolves, in wich the lives of the protagonists are shared, in which they find their momentary sexual “identity”, based on the desire they feel for each other: not a man for a man, but Elio for Oliver and vice versa. Being the protagonists, their identities, are therefore metaphorically subject to the fluidity of time. Identities that are subjected to this fluidity not only in relation to their sexuality, but also to their own individuality. This fact is shown when the protagonists decide to call each other by the other´s name, such as the title of the film.

Primary configurations is the title of this work that evolves from the previous project Be like water, where he puddles are transformed, they are configured to occupy more pictorial surface.

In the definition of minimal art or primary structures, minimal works personify states of maximum order, but with minimal means or complexity of elements. The whole of the work is more important than the relationships between the singular components, the whole is more important than the parts.

“Primary configurations”, according to its definition:

Configuration:

1-action to configure.

2-particular form of something, determined by the arrangement of the parts that compose it.

Primary: the primary elements of any pictorial work, without which it could not be started, are: the point, the line and the plane. “Point and Line on the Plane”. Kandinsky.

Like the movie, Call me by your name, and starting from the definition of minimal art or primary structures, in Primary configurations the relationship between back ground an spots, points an lines on the plane are kept in tension, leading to the resemblance of recognizable icons. From these, very characteristic icons in the form of human profiles can be recognized under a subjective gaze.

Points and likes are subject to the flow of time, like the protagonists of the film. The work is produced, in short, from an expansion from the epicenter to the outside, only determined by the perimeter of the frame.

In the film, the names of the protagonists, given the static nature and substantiality of the language, are no longer a reflection of their own identities. Only their particular and concrete relationship remains, anchored in a certain time, but which does not delimit their dynamics, being and identity.

Butler, in The Gender Contested, criticizes Nietzsche´s metaphysics of substance. This author recognizes that this metaphysical tradition establishes, among other reasons, to find concrete theoretical security in the apparent order of identities, thus hiding or simplifying a reality in continuous development.

In the same way that the metaphysics of the substance to which the verb “to be” is inevitably linked -says of the river, which simply “is”, “freezing” thus, in some way, its intrinsic and constitutive character in continuous becoming. Thus, by making substantialist gender assignments to people we are forgetting that gender is, according to Butler, “a persistent characterization that passes as reality”: “in the same way that the everchanging current of the river, the substantialist characterization of gender would not cease to be”, for Butler, “the illusion or the effect derived from a reaffirmation based on the constant repetition of a specific type of action”.

Simone de Beauvoir stated that: “On ne naît pas femme, on le deviant”. You are not born a woman, you become one. According to Butler, the change from the word “woman to gender X allows us to approach a theory that requires “a new vocabulary that establishes and multiplies present participles of different types, signifiable and expansive categories”.

In Primary Configurations the use of geometric perspective is rejected at all times, and it is the color contrasts that determine it. But its function is not exclusively to order space and time, but also to reflect the interrelation of the individual with his environment, in constant change, where forms can be called differently, where all genders fit.