Lot 38 | Dora Maurer | "Gemini 8"

A diverse oeuvre
Dóra Maurer is considered one of the most consistent artists in Hungarian post-war art. In her works, which include graphics, photography, film, action art and painting, she deals with topics such as perception, movement, displacement and transformation. Despite the diversity of her work, both in terms of genres and topics, her career since the late 1960s has been characterized by an analytical-mathematical and clear approach. On the one hand, the pursuit of systematization and adherence to the algorithms defined by the artist herself is always present. On the other hand, the desire to escape the system, to modify or abandon the organizing principle, appears time and again. Both endeavors aim to preserve the possibility of constant change and to avoid everything fixed, completed, and final. Based on the observation of simple facts, she creates flexible systems that are developed further, carry a multitude of possible variations within them, and provide the artist with a secure starting point. At the same time, Maurer is guided by the obvious need to follow this or that branch in the system, or to return to an earlier state, or to radically change the structure. This consistency has earned her recognition not only in Hungary but also internationally. Her works are part of renowned collections, such as the Tate Gallery, London, MOMA, New York and the Albertina, Vienna. In 2003 she received the Hungarian Kossuth State Prize, in 2013 the Peter C. Ruppert Prize for Concrete Art in Europe.

The “Quasi-Bilder”
Based on the continuous development of Maurer's system, the series of “Quasi-Bilder”, which originated in the 1970s and developed from the experimental series “Mengentafel”, can be seen as groundbreaking for the work “Gemini 8” offered here. This series deals with abstract, systematic representations of form and color. Maurer further developed the series and created systematic diagrams that she projected into space. This approach culminated in her seminal, room-filling wall painting at Schloss Buchberg am Kamp in Austria in 1982 (see illustration). The “Quasi-Bilder” have been a central motif in Maurer's work ever since. In the early 1990s, the artist began projecting the two-dimensional diagrams onto three-dimensional surfaces, such as curved or bent surfaces. She also experimented with displaying them on textiles and other irregular surfaces. These distortions led to new variations of her systematic and strict images. She also increasingly examines enlarged details of her work by trying them out on geometric models and exploring the effects of space and perspective. Her works are constantly changing and reacting to the influences of their surroundings, experiencing constant changes in form and color. A new freedom of form finds its way into her work and the important series of works such as “Overlappings”, “Quod-Libet” or “Hemiszferikus” are created, which are continued in her current work.

“Gemini 8”
The series of “Gemini” pictures, to which the work offered here belongs, also finds its origin in the early 1990s and is based on the idea of juxtaposing pairs of pictures. Two shaped canvases form a diptych here, which approach each other in terms of composition and picture format, but are not identical. The unequal “twin” thus offers the artist the opportunity to contrast and question the themes of form and color in direct comparison, as well as to achieve new and exciting spatial effects for the viewer. While the first paintings in the series are still very strict developments of the “Quasi-Bilder” series (see illustration), they become increasingly freer and more dynamic in form and color through the developments of the 1990s. Based on the “Hemiszferikus” works, in which Maurer places the image carrier on an underlying globular grid (hemisphere) (see illustration), “Gemini 8” can be seen as an effective circular overall painting that integrates the wall to complete the composition.
Maurer skillfully achieves the effect of a sphere protruding from the wall by means of the optical illusion of the curved picture plane in combination with the color-shifting squares that divide the picture surface. In 2006, Maurer translated Josef Albers' theoretical work “Interaction of Color” (1963), in which he analyzes color relationships in an extremely concise and comprehensible way, into Hungarian. It is an important reference for Maurer's later series of works, in which a deeper examination of the subject of color is omnipresent. In “Gemini 8”, the juxtaposition of the two pictorial elements, which diverge minimally in color, and the resulting overall effect, is interesting. Maurer achieves the illusion of transparency and incoming light by adding a unit of white for the layout of the other element to the dark primary colors of the first element. One further development of the Albers examples is that Maurer intensifies the illusion of space by bending the color segments along the imaginary outer shell of a globe. This allows the viewer to make associations with “Gemini 8” that go far beyond the purely analytical-geometric and color effects. Ultimately, the artist also questions the basic order and division of the world.