Artist Manss Aval has been honored in a review by Dr. Federica Peligra of the Esposizione Triennale for his art.
In the works of Manss Aval the canvas becomes a repository of graphic signs
that rest upon a background that is as neutral as possible, where each track
is a discovery and revelation, where each figure rises to the role of the
protagonist.
This idea of a fresh start makes him similar to Joan Mirň, famous artist
associated with the importance of signs, inventor of mysterious “scriptures”
and most faithful follower of the magic value of the gesture.
A work by Joan Mirň in particular that approaches that of Manss Aval’s is:
“Portrait of a Dancer” Paris, mid-February–Spring 1928; where there is a
whole ritual almost mystic, a religious silence.
The “acrobatic” arrangement of the strands of grass on the sand, perhaps
accidental, perhaps intentional, in the works of Manss Aval recalls,
although in a less experimental and defined way, the compositions that
Roberth Simthson and Richard Long used to create with materials of nature.
Let’s not forget, however, that in the case of Manss Aval we are referring
to painting and not installation, but there is a big similarity to these two
exponents of Land Art in their desire to “organize” the chaos and random
disorder of nature.
Manss’ Aval’s works, express an essentiality and touching simplicity, where
there is no added elements to spoil the idyll, where the background is
almost a blank screen, where only signs are arranged harmoniously and the
veracity of the composition seems to be in front of a picture full of light:
a light that doesn’t generate shadows and is able to cancel the third
dimension, by removing the thickness of the bodies.
Maybe those fragments of yellowed grass are composing letters, a code phrase
or some kind of imaginary, the fact is that it is a language of which only
the artist is the interpreter.
Aval, thanks to his profession as a photographer, as well as a painter,
manages to see through new, alert, lively and “mobile” eyes, all the things
that surround him. He manages to restore dignity to the little quirks of
nature and to give voice to objects and beings that inhabit this world. Only
then the sea, the sand, the birds, the plants once again have their
autonomous place in the ecosystem, without the immediate intervention of
man.
He represents always a disenchanted reality, but nevertheless makes sure not
to spoil the sense of wonder for nature. The lyrical sense of this work is
behind the silence that rises almost “deafening”; silence that keeps away
this time the chirp of seagulls or the lapping of the waves, leaving only
the hot sand that burns in the sun and that has embedded inside the rocky
crystals of arboreal strands.
Our world, the one where we live every day, the one we make functional to
our small or large discoveries is presented in a completely new dress by
Manss Aval, a dress covered by truthfulness, but also of sweetness and
intimate solemnity.
Dr. Federica Peligra, “Last Paradise”, Esposizione Triennale Di Arti Visive
A Roma, Giorgio Mondadori, editor, p. 71-73, 2014.
