DÓRA MAURER

The earliest works in the exhibition belong to Maurer’s ‘Displacement’ series, produced in the 1970s, which like much of her output systematically traces movement and change. These tempera on paper pictures from 1972, feature coloured rectangles with diagonal bands overlaid across the paper according to a particular system. The result of shifting and re-ordering of the initial form – horizontally, vertically or diagonally – they reference the organising principles of mathematics and the notion of the ‘magic square’, for the artist, always ‘a basic symbol of human existence and thinking’.

The presence of the body and the sense of a free and individual autonomy within an overriding conceptual parameter, characterises Maurer’s approach. Playing with spatial illusion and the ‘function of seeing’, the ‘Overlappings’ and subsequent ‘IXEK’ series feature shaped canvas on wood panels – bold, geometric areas of colour, layered to produce an effect of transparency and the sense of a three-dimensional sculptural form. In the ‘Overlappings’ works, the rectangles are rendered as if projected onto arcing, spherical shapes, their stretched forms emerging from a studied exploration of what Maurer has described as the ‘reciprocity of colour and form’. These explorations are furthered in the ‘IXEK’ series, in which illusional, warping, intertwining and interconnecting areas of colours create complex visual distortions.