Suspended Beauty

Nicolas Mastracchio

about SUSPENDED BEAUTY

The work of Nicolás Mastracchio (b.Buenos Aires, 1983) centers the relationship between the artistic practice, more precisely beauty, and the spiritual quest. 
The compositional elements found in his photographs create ambiguous universes that produce the sensation of an enveloping infinity in the viewer. There is no gravity, but instead reflections of reflections, lights, and flashes. There is no floor or support level. A horizon line in some of the works marks an apparent limit between the base and the background, introducing hints of figuration in the basic abstraction. But it is a fragile, unreal limit, which is not enough to provide a clear notion of differentiation in this light, atmospheric universe. 
These abstract compositions nevertheless allow us to see in hyper-realistic detail every inconsequential object -handkerchiefs, threads, small plates, bits of cellophane...- treated as a precious stone and thus turned into a jewel.In these illusory spaces, beauty relates in Mastracchio's work to the practice of meditation. Through the contemplative act, a mind/body state of receptivity and communion with the world and others is sought. In a certain way, it takes up the color field painting of Mark Rothko's work, which induces the spectator into an immersive relationship with the work. This connection/interaction stimulates the search for a mystical state that implies the suspension of rational judgment and the replacement of speculative logic by the body's consciousness inhabiting the continuous present. 
In terms of technique, Mastracchio's photographs are in a middle ground between the analogical resources of classical studio photography and digital ones. The scenes are assembled entirely in the real world without subsequent retouching, implying that the shots' timing is slow, calm, and of great concentration. The small objects are placed in an exact location and precisely illuminated to highlight their formal properties.In the state that the works aspire to accompany, the strategy passes exclusively through a sensorial, pre-rational mobilization. Light, a label of Argentine art in the nineties, takes into these works its definition of "leve”(airy): the image floats. There is no weight or gesture that refers to the human, yet we can imagine someone holding their breath to produce the stillness of the uninhabited landscape. The works presented in this exhibition invite a journey through different variants in which Mastracchio explores the always questionable limit between abstraction and figuration, photography and painting, structure and imagination, and the world of things and the world of thought. 

Mariana Cerviño, May 2022

Translation Carolina Buzzetti

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